Globe columnist Peter Grant meets Connor Wray of Wirral Globe Arts Ambassadors Off the Ground who have set sail with their outdoor theatre production of Sinbad.

What is the best thing about doing open air theatre as opposed to indoor?

OTG: It’s the way that theatre has to adapt when you put it outdoors. In a traditional theatre space indoors, there’s so much that can be hidden and so many things that can be reliant on effects to achieve.

In the outdoors, you remove all of those opportunities, which means if you want to create something spectacular or mysterious, you have to find incredibly inventive ways of doing so.

The other part of it is the atmosphere. There’s a natural breaking down of the wall between audience and performers when you perform outside, and that leads to audiences feeling directly involved in the shows they’re seeing.

It creates an incredible atmosphere, particularly when the light starts to fade and the whole world of the play seems to be closing in.

You seem to love action heroes - Zorro, Musketeers, Sinbad, is that because they lend themselves to outdoors?

OTG: The action/adventure story has become a bit of a theme the past few years for OTG. It started back with Jason and the Argonauts. Audiences responded really, really well to this idea of an epic quest with noble characters. Then there was the rise of the superhero film phenomenon that has sort of coincided with a lot of the productions we’ve staged.

Superheroes, or epic adventurers, are very much the vogue right now, and we’d be foolish not to make the most of that.

As a company, we’ve found a model that works, and while that doesn’t mean we’ll always stick to similar types of characters and stories, it’s nice to know we always have that in our locker.

The other part of it is that it plays so strongly into our strengths as a company.

We pride ourselves on our storytelling, our invention and our stage combat training.

When you combine those things with young, energetic casts and the opportunity to fight big, bad villains or monsters, it can lead to something really special.

Have you any great ambitions to stage a real big interpretation?

OTG: It's crucial that, as a company, you’re looking to the future, and OTG are no different in that respect.

I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have ambitions of opening our own venue and taking our touring productions worldwide, but in order to achieve those sorts of things you have to set realistic goals first.

I don’t want to give anything away just yet, but suffice to say that people are going to hear a lot more about Off the Ground Theatre in the coming years.

Even if it rains heavily the show must go on - is this always true?

OTG: This is the question we probably get asked the most in my role with the company!

The short answer when someone says ‘what happens if it rains?’ is ‘we get wet’, and I’d say 99% of the time we stick to that.

In my time touring with the company, which is almost a decade now, we’ve only ever had to cancel two shows because of inclement weather. I think that gives you an idea of our determination to carry on even when the elements are against us.

Performing in the rain can actually be a bonus sometimes, bizarrely, as you get even more of that audience/performer atmosphere .

When it rains there’s an element of ‘we’re all in this together now’ about the performances, and I think that attitude has actually led to some of our best ever responses to performances.

All that said, we’d still rather perform in the sunshine...

UK TOUR

July 27 Birkenhead Priory

July 26 Gawthorpe Hall, Burnley

July 29 Claremont Farm

Aug 1 Queen’s Park, Wirral

Aug 2 Bodelwyddan Castle, Denbighshire

Aug 3 Plas Newydd, Llangollen

Aug 4 Royden Park

Aug 5 Gordale Garden Centre

For more information call from 0151 625 2929 or visit www.offtheground.co.uk