The Stage

Pleasance’s £100,000 fund for graduate productions

Published Thursday 12 August 2004 at 10:35 by Jeremy Austin

Pleasance director Christopher Richardson has announced plans for a £100,000 fund that will go towards an annual production by drama graduates, set up in the name of actor and writer Charlie Hartill, who died earlier this year.

Entitled the Charlie Hartill Special Reserve Fund, the scheme has been launched at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where there are covenant forms available from the venue so that gift aid can be claimed. The London venue will also be providing these. It is hoped that enough money will be raised for a group of Hartill’s friends to perform a pantomime that he wrote at the Pleasance in Islington.

Said Richardson: “At first we want to put on bigger shows - that’s what the Pleasance London has always been about. It is trying to get big shows on stage, get people out of drama school, out of college and us doing something so that there is something for them to do when they come here.”

Eligible shows will have more than five people on stage and of those 40% must be less than five years out of full time education. Richardson said he wants a fund of £100,000 to enable him to operate a small project in London.

Hartill, a former Footlights president, was also the information technology expert at the Pleasance. He committed suicide in January, aged 31.

The Pleasance is also celebrating his life by selling wine that bears his name at the Edinburgh venue and by staging the Charlie Hartill Special Reserve evening of comedy on August 9. The event will be hosted by Garth Marenghi, with proceeds going to the fund.