Kneehigh Theatre
international touring theatre company
Kneehigh Theatre was an international touring theatre company founded in 1980 by Mike Shepherd and based in Cornwall, England. The company was based in barns on the southern Cornish coast, at Gorran Haven, but the administration was in Truro. On 3 June 2021, Kneehigh announced it would close.
Overview
Kneehigh was started in 1980 by Mike Shepherd. Early productions were performed in village halls, marquees, cliff-tops and quarries. Their productions were often based around mythological tales such as the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale The Red Shoes, The Bacchae and the Cornish legend Tristan and Yseult. Their artistic director Emma Rice won Best Director 2002, Barclays Theatre Awards.
Their productions have been performed in locations such as Restormel Castle, Minack Theatre, National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, Royal Shakespeare Company and the Eden Project as well as their award-winning Asylum Season. They used a variety of theatrical elements including puppetry, live music (often played with folk instruments such as ukuleles and dulcimers) and an emphasis on visual imagery.
Between 1989 and 2006, Sue Hill and Bill Mitchell were working as part of Kneehigh on work that was happening outdoors and on site, influenced heavily by such groups as Footsbarn Theatre and Welfare State International.
The public source identifies “Kneehigh Theatre” as international touring theatre company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kneehigh, Theatre and international.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6421891. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2021, 2002 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kneehigh Theatre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.