Kilter isn’t a conventional theatre company: you won’t find any auditoriums here and you’d be hard pressed to watch two performances that run the same course. Instead, Kilter finds an interesting location and builds a constantly evolving story around it – that’s where the ‘site-responsive’ bit comes in. The tagline, ‘Beyond Theatre’, embodies their aim to engage audiences with issues bigger than the performance itself, such as social justice, English heritage and the environment. One of the most direct ways of achieving this is to get out of the theatre building itself.

“Ultimately we aim to help the audience improve their attitudes towards sustainable development,” he explains. “Theatre in red velvet seats too often allows grey-haired punters to nod off in the dark for two hours. A Kilter production, on the other hand, is invariably encountered on your feet and from the outset you are required to actively engage with the issues.”

Olly is a professional actor who has worked throughout his career to increase awareness of climate change, and he believes interaction is vital in involving the audience in the concept of a collective fate. Choices during the performance about what to watch and where to stand encourage post-play discussion, which in turn leads to an eventual appreciation of the bigger picture.

A good example of this in action can be found in Kilter’s last production, ‘Remote Patrol’, which was devised and performed in a derelict cemetery in Bath. Olly considers the show a resounding success, arguing that the very act of seeing Remote Patrol “introduced a local community to each other, to their shared heritage and to a fabulous unused green space right in their back gardens. People were signing up to community initiatives in their droves, yearning for more opportunities to contribute”.

In the wake of this success, Kilter’s next project will take place in a disused retail unit on a high street during the January sales. Kilter doesn’t like to preach, particularly not to the converted. With doors flung open and no admission charge, Olly hopes this next project will strike somewhere near the heart of the beast in the battle to raise climate change awareness.

Olly considers education and inspiration to be vital if we are to improve our awareness of climate change, and he cites humanity’s success in harnessing energy and evolving our lifestyles over the last 200 years as proof of our collective creativity and ingenuity. He hopes Kilter’s creative and playful productions can latch onto this to help inspire an energy descent.

So why should Olly and Kilter be considered ‘cool’?

“Climate Change is a very zeitgeist topic in theatre at the moment and that’s great,” he says. “At the same time, commercial theatre is the energy-junkie of the arts world, with vast energy bills and horrible waste. We’re trying to walk the talk, prove the pudding and be the change we want to see in the world.”

Lucy Langdon is a journalist and lives in Bath.

To find out more about Kilter, click here, and to watch a video of Remote Patrol, click here.