THE COLLECTOR
Hidden behind a huge metal door marked DANGERY ZONE, a world unlike any other was waiting to be discovered…
A new immersive theatre experience by Carl Grose
There was a door in Redruth that shouldn’t have been there…
Hidden behind a huge metal door marked DANGERY ZONE, a world unlike any other was waiting to be discovered.
Audiences stepped inside The Collector, an immersive theatre experience by acclaimed Cornish playwright Carl Grose, inspired by the extraordinary imagination of the late Bill Mitchell, founder of Wildworks and one of Cornwall’s most influential creative visionaries.
Part cabinet of curiosities, part underground bunker, The Collector transported audiences into a strange and beautiful future shaped by the objects we chose to keep, the stories we passed on, and the memories we refused to let disappear. Their guide was Genni. They met The Collector. And they walked out seeing the world a little differently.
Created for audiences of all ages, this intimate production blended theatre, storytelling and immersive design to create an adventure through a world of wonder, humour and mystery.
Inspired by Bill’s legendary collection of found objects and treasures, known as Bill’s Attic, the production celebrated Cornwall’s rich tradition of bold, imaginative theatre while asking timeless questions about legacy, loss and what it meant to collect a life.
The Collector was directed by Josh Nawras and Felix Mortimer, with a script by Carl Grose. Jessica Sharville designed the set and costumes, assisted by Robin Irvine, Anna Lovering and Ruby Bankhead on props and costumes. Lewis Aburrow was the technical prop maker, the set was built by Dan Richardson and Luke Woods, and Burnt Soul made the bespoke costumes. Flinn Milligan composed the music and designed the sound. Peter Twose served as puppetry director, with puppets made by AJ Packwood and Romina Hytten as puppetry consultant. Izzy Wilkinson produced, Kylie Sullivan was stage manager, and Jasper Knight was lighting designer and technical manager, supported by Lucy Gaskill. Gem Stevens created the graphic design, Grace Davies-Wiggins led engagement and schools work, and Bethia Naughton-Rumbo produced the social media content.
The cast features Nofel Nawras as Genno/The Collector and Catrin Walker-Booth as Fern. The voices are Anna Murphy as the Caged Archangel, Mike Shepard as Gargantua, Sue Hill as Gerbil, and Bill Mitchell as Bill Mitchell.
DANGERY ZONE
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DANGERY ZONE ⚠️
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In March 2021, I [Felix] came to Redruth for the first time! Josh and I were doing a writing residency at Bill's Attic at Krowji.
Bill’s Attic was the first place I'd ever been in Redruth and what a first impression!. A room full of creativity. Sue [Hill] then introduced us to a colourful catalogue of creatives in Redruth and that tipped the scales. This would be a great place to make a permanent base and construct The Ladder.
Then, as part of our National Lottery Heritage projects, we decided that the heritage of the attic was a crucial one to celebrate. We commissioned a play from Carl Grose and asked him if he’d like to write it at the Attic.
We then secured funding from Arts Council England to have it produced - and here we are!
Our designer Jess Sharville and graphic designer Gem Stevens spent a lot of time both at Bill's Attic at Krowji and the original attic at Sue's house which inspired the design and the graphics.
Our company has always made work for small numbers of people, where audiences can get up close and personal to performers and feel like part of the action. Whether it was our six-part Tempest in an East London shopfront, The Trial by Kafka which took the action onto the streets of Shoreditch to 2,000 individual audience members one at a time, or Macbeth scattered across a tower block with audiences staying overnight.Carl’s play, The Collector, sees us enter a version of the attic 10,000 years into the future, when Cornwall has undergone cataclysmic collapse, but the hope and creativity contained in the attic holds the answer to Cornwall’s deliverance…
Felix Mortimer
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Bill”s projects were born in his Attic, a private creation space which housed his extraordinary lifetime’s collection of artefacts: bones, saints, shells, bells, toys, spoons, snow globes, archaeology…the flotsam and jetsam of life, all arranged with idiosyncratic and exquisite care in the attic of his house.
Following Bill’s death in 2017 the collection was moved to Krowji, where it is currently stored, the space was designed by Ellie Williams to hold the spirit with which Bill collected and worked, enabling ideas to take wing, dreams to be mined, mistakes to be made and the world to be seen differently, a space to be a creative forge for artists of all disciplines, backgrounds and nationalities.
The Ladder have been working with Krowji, Sue Hill and Writers’ Block over the last 2 years to explore how the collection can be activated and preserved. In 2025 we complete an Architectural Heritage Fund funded feasibility study to bring the attic collection to The Ladder, we have now received a second AHF grant to further develop these plans. To ensure this unique resource continues to inspire and is held, shared and loved for generations to come.
Joshua Nawras
Find out more about Bill and the attic here: https://billsattic.org/ -
On Thursday 8th October we welcomed representatives from the Cornish theatre community to breakfast, to have an opportunity to see our play, The Collector, and to contribute to our consultation on Bill’s Attic and to share their practice to try and define a new frontier for Cornish Theatre. I’ll cover the first few of these in separate posts. All in all it was a packed morning of pastries, bhajis and chatter.
The centrepiece of the day was thrown over to the theatre and performance community to discuss what the next frontier for Cornish Theatre. Cornish theatre has never had much money and Julie Caplin-Grey set out the last thirty years of funding with the peaks and throughs of Creative Partnerships and European Development Money but what stood out was how little that stopped companies from innovating and playing always innovating to thrive and survive. Across ten talks, makers described the frontiers they are working at: community, access, price, climate, place, and even the survival of their form.
Read all about it HERE
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Bill's Attic is a place where an artist's life of collecting transformed into a place to play. As part of our Symposium on Cornish Theatre practice we asked a room full of artists, writers, therapists, performers and neighbours what it should become next.
We are working with the Architectural Heritage Fund to plan a new building to foreground the rich theatrical heritage that Bill’s Attic represents.
On Thursday 8th October we ran a series of consultation conversations around one question: what should the next Bill's Attic feel like, and who should it be for? The gathered group represented the best of Cornish Theatre and answers were funny, generous and often contradictory.
