The house team are always on the look out for incredible new theatre productions and companies to tour throughout the south east.

We support between 10 and 12 productions to tour per year. We’re not producers so this work is always finished and tour ready. We guarantee to cover the company’s touring costs and negotiate bespoke guarantee vs split deals with each venue depending on their circumstances and audience development goals, using our funding to subsidise the difference.

We tour contemporary theatre, including dance-theatre and contemporary circus, that:

• may struggle to tour in the region without our support
• covers a wide range of themes and topics
• represents the diverse population that make up the communities in our region
• appeals to a range of audiences – from babies to adventure seekers, from families to those who might feel ‘traditional theatre’ isn’t for them.

We are also keen to support companies to increase their accessibility and environmental credentials.

Each summer we present work that can tour to outside spaces and we are always interested in hearing about productions that can take place in community spaces such as libraries, halls and sports centres.

We have a commitment to tour two international productions across our network each year. We believe that work from other countries has the potential to present different views, cultures and experiences that enrich and inform our communities.

We plan tours 12 to 24 months ahead. Because we are acting as intermediaries for our network, we feel it is essential for a member of our team, steering group or one of our programming associates to see work before considering it. We regularly attend festivals, performances, scratch nights and pitching events.

If you’re a company and would like to invite house to see your show with a view to potential touring, please send the details to meghan@housetheatre.org.uk ideally 6 to 8 weeks in advance of the production date. While we endeavour to see as much as possible, we are a small team with a limited travel budget so will only send people if it meets the criteria above. If you have a reasonable quality recording of the show that you feel represents it well you could send this instead alongside a tour pack. All work seen is discussed by the house team for its suitability.

While we can support touring costs we do not cover any production costs, including rehearsals or auditions, so companies may still need to source additional funding.

Once we have decided on a programme of shows to offer over a season (Spring, Summer and Autumn) we send these details to the programmers in our network and begin to book a tour using our knowledge of the region and venue’s priorities. This may be contained within a short period of a few weeks or run on ad hoc dates across several months, it very much depends on the show, venue interest and a company’s specific circumstances.

tour-finder.org is a free national resource run by house & Farnham Maltings for companies and artists to post listings about their tour-ready productions, and for bookers to easily search for shows for their programme.

Given the numerous challenges facing the touring sector, tour-finder.org is one way we hope to make touring and booking productions more efficient and contribute to ensuring a sustainable, vibrant touring sector across England.

The site exists to create links between programmers and touring artists, and help tours travel further across England. It is not intended to replace traditional tour booking methods and personal relationships, but to make it easier to add those last few dates to fill a programmer’s season or make an artist’s tour viable.