What is Event Theatre?
Event theatre takes performance out of the traditional theatre environment and places it inside an event.
There may be no stage.
The audience may be standing beside you.
They can talk to your character. Question you. Challenge you. Investigate the story.
There is no fourth wall to hide behind.
Where were you last night?
You know where your character was.
You know what really happened.
You know what you're trying to hide.
What you don't have...
Is a line.
That's event theatre.
Acting without the safety net.
This isn't about making everything up.
And it isn't about memorising everything in advance.
Event theatre sits between those two things.
You need enough preparation to understand the character and story - and enough freedom to respond to what actually happens.
Then somebody says something you weren't expecting.
And the performance begins.
What you'll develop.
Character
A character needs to survive beyond rehearsed dialogue.
Explore how objectives, relationships, attitudes and secrets give you enough to keep playing when the conversation goes somewhere unexpected.
Improvisation
Good event-theatre improvisation isn't about being the quickest or funniest person in the room.
It's about listening, responding, adapting and recognising what the situation needs.
Audience Interaction
The audience isn't simply watching.
Learn to involve Guests naturally, answer unexpected questions, respond to their ideas and make them feel that what they say actually matters.
Storytelling
Learn when to reveal, withhold, repeat and redirect information without turning every conversation into exposition.
Explore the difference between adding detail to the fictional world and accidentally rewriting the story you're supposed to be telling.
Ensemble
Event theatre isn't a competition for attention.
Learn to recognise when another performer needs support, when a conversation needs rescuing and when the best thing you can do is get out of the way.
One story.
Four sessions.
Every Block begins with a specially written fictional world.
Over four weeks, you'll get to know its characters, relationships, secrets and conflicts — while using that developing story as the training ground for practical Event Theatre skills.
Session One:
ENTER
THE WORLD
Meet your character. Explore relationships, status and the fictional world. Start playing before you know exactly where the story will go.
Session Two:
PROTECT
THE STORY
Work with objectives and information. Learn to improvise freely without inventing your way out of the story.
Session Three:
EXPECT
THE UNEXPECTED
The Guest raises the stakes. Questions, interruptions, misunderstandings and plans that don't work. Listen, adapt and keep playing.
Session Four:
THE
LONG FORM
Put it all together in one sustained event-theatre improvisation. No fixed dialogue. No stopping. The Guest is part of the story.
Enough structure to play.
Enough freedom to surprise you.
These three principles run through everything we do:
Add detail, don't add architecture.
Not knowing is playable.
Play what happened, not what you planned.
What is
The Long Form.
The exercises stop.
The story begins.
By Session Four, you've spent three weeks developing your character, exploring their relationships and learning how to work inside the story.
Now the safety net comes off.
What you don't know is exactly how the story will unfold.
The group enters one sustained event-theatre improvisation. No fixed dialogue. No stopping. No starting again.
New information emerges. Plans fail. Other actors surprise you.
The Guests will too.
Keep the story alive.
Meet the Guest.
The Guest is a real person entering the fictional world without a character or script.
From Session One, you'll begin learning how to involve them in the story.
They're not another actor. They haven't rehearsed with you. They don't know what you're planning.
The Guest might be curious.
Suspicious.
Helpful.
Quiet.
Confused.
Absolutely convinced they've solved everything.
Or fascinated by the one piece of information you hoped nobody would notice.
That's precisely why they're useful.
Don't perform at them.
Play with them.
Is this for me?
Insolent Retinue is for adults who already have some acting or performance experience and want to explore a different way of working.
You might perform professionally, with an amateur company, be studying performance or be returning to acting after time away.
You don't need previous Event Theatre experience.
You don't need professional credits, formal drama-school training, murder-mystery experience or a background in improvisation.
What matters is that you're comfortable performing and ready to listen, respond, experiment and work practically with other actors.
Minimum age: 18.
This isn't an introduction to acting.
It's an opportunity to use your acting differently.
How a Block works.
ONE COMPLETE BLOCK
4 weekly sessions
2 hours per session
8 hours of training
1 specially written story
Character and story materials included.
Three development sessions followed by one Long Form.
Blocks are booked as a complete four-session experience.
Built from the event floor.
Insolent Retinue was created by Event Theatre practitioner David Claridge, drawing on around fifteen years of practical experience performing murder mysteries and interactive theatre.
The training isn't designed around what might happen when an actor meets an unpredictable audience.
It's built around what does happen.
The question that won't go away.
The clue nobody notices.
The actor who reveals too much.
The audience member who develops a completely different theory.
The moment the story goes somewhere nobody expected.
We've been in the room when it happened.
Now we train for it.
Ready to enter the story?
Every half term brings a different plot.
Different characters.
Different relationships.
Different secrets.
Different things waiting to go wrong.
NOW BOOKING
The First Block
A film noir. A premiere. And ninety seconds nobody expected to see.
Put the skills you've been reading about into practice inside a specially written film-noir story.
Four sessions. Eight hours. One story.
Mondays 2, 9, 16 & 23 November 2026
6.30–8.30pm
55 Newhall Street, Birmingham City Centre
INTRODUCTORY PRICE: £99
Some acting experience required.
Event Theatre experience optional.