e’ve got to do that again in an hour,” one of us says between panting gasps. We were soaked with water from a slapstick bucket fight – it had seemed a good idea in rehearsal three days before. Ninety minutes of Comedy of Errors carried by just four actors. A theatrical couch-to-10k without any training in between. Literally from the couch. We’d been on one since March and thought it would be a good idea to dive cold into five full shows in a 24-hour window. In a normal year we’d do a big one for 150-odd audience members. But this obviously isn’t a normal year. I met Sue Best and Phil Bowen a couple of years before I went to Lamda. They’d planted their own theatre in Powys, Wales. The Willow Globe: a living theatre grown from the ground. “How do you know about the Willow?” I remember a producer friend whispering, like it was a mythical legend. The best kept secret of British theatre. In 2012 I suggested to some fellow students that we should do a little summer holiday Shakespeare and the Willow was the obvious venue. The Wet Mariners was born. It’s since become an annual tonic to help us navigate our feast and famine industry. Those in on the secret of the Willow know that it’s more than a picturesque theatrical den. The lifeblood is its loyal audience, the heart is Sue and Phil. Their ethos runs deep into the land: Shakespeare is for everyone. They’ve cultivated the most fulfilling, challenging and welcoming audience that over the years we’ve come to know – it’s such a treat to build a show knowing exactly who you’re making it for. Some, like our beloved late friend Tony Hampshire (the best verse speaker I’ve heard) had been watching Shakespeare since the 40s. Others had been dragged along by friends and found those school-age demons telling them it wasn’t for them had finally been exorcised. Performances feel like a conversation-with rather than shouting-in-the-dark-at. “That was the first time he’d been able to leave his bedroom in six months,” Phil pointed out as one audience member was driven off after our first show this year. The Willow sits in an area where many neighbours were too far apart to hear the collective NHS clap. The silent isolation of lockdown has been so much louder in rural parts of the country. Many others tell us how this is their first trip out, the most social they’ve been, the only thing that’s happened in the area for half a year. The audience provided all the energy we needed to get through the next four shows. Theatres like the Willow Globe are the confluence of communities – living and breathing with them. The fact that the Willow was literally grown out of the land is so apt. In this abnormal year it stood strong and is needed more than ever. This is the moment where these tucked away little secrets deserve to move a little further centre stage. As we emerge bleary-eyed into our new normal, theatre and the arts – if they can survive – will be looking for a role in repairing the damage done to our society. This year has exacerbated an already established trend of isolating individualisation. More than ever we need to share, connect and find commonality. As we look for this we must not repeat the pattern of forgetting rural areas. There are people, there are communities, there are audiences to be found right across the country. We have so much to gain as artists, as theatre-makers and as an industry by travelling further. It’s worth getting soaked with a bucket of water for. Find out more about the Wet Mariners and Willow Globe.