A HUSBAND and wife team with acting in their blood are going it alone on the world’s stage.

Artistic directors Max Brandt and Jane Windsor-Smith, who for the past decade have been at the forefront of Dartmouth’s Shakespeare Week, have formed a new professional theatre company.

The couple have just started the Devon-based Theatre Hub and already have two touring productions in the pipeline for the first part of this year.

One is a new piece written by Max called Domin­ion and the other is Twelfth Night, produced to commemorate the death of Shakespeare 400 hundred years ago this year.

Max said: ‘Steven Spiel­berg recently said “people have forgotten how to tell real stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. They just have a beginning that goes on and on and on.” Well, Theatre Hub, is aiming to prove him wrong.’

Jane said it seemed that, despite there being many theatres in the West Country, too few of them were presenting ‘real’ theatre’.

‘There has recently been a trend towards stand-up and tribute bands and ‘live’, filmed presentations of classic theatre,’ she said.

‘This in itself is no bad thing, but trying to get real live theatre on stage, in the moment, so audiences can actually experience that visceral buzz of something happening in real time is becoming more and more difficult to find and to get theatres to actually commit to.’

The current tour has been more than six months in the organising, most of that time being taken up with finding a theatre that would even consider taking on a live production - let alone a new play by a new author and company.

‘Finding actors to appear in these shows was perhaps, the easiest part of the entire process,’ said Jane.

‘But with a two hour new production by an untried company we are incredibly indebted to those theatres that have had the foresight and courage to take us on, also bearing in mind that we are completely self-funded.

‘What we are trying to do is present great stories, excitingly told, with a beginning, middle and end. It’s about entertainment and it seems, for funding purposes, we just don’t tick the correct boxes.’

Because of the sensitive nature of Dominion, Max has decided that he will be donating 25 per cent of his script-sale royalties to Breast Cancer Care (UK) and the company also hopes to make at least one of the performances as a fund-raiser for the charity.

The company’s second production in 2016 sees them performing Shakes­peare’s ever-green comedy Twelfth Night in slightly more unusual open-air locations around Devon, including Dartington.

‘This is something of which both Max and I have huge experience,’ said Jane, who was one of the founders of Dartmouth Shakespeare Week in 2002.

Both been involved in the production, directing and acting aspects of the festival.

‘Max has played many of the great characters in Shakespearean drama, from Falstaff through Prospero to Touchstone and he’s recently directed King Lear,’ said Jane.

‘And the same is true of myself, directing and acting and making costumes. We all have a hand in pretty much every aspect of these productions.’

Full tour dates for both productions will be on the company’s website www.theatrehub.uk.

More information about Dartmouth Shakespeare Week can found at www.theinntheatrecompany.co.uk.