Welcome 

We are Orange Skies Theatre and we are fundraising to take our acclaimed theatre/circus show WILD ONION on tour across the UK in February - April 2023. 

WILD ONION: About the show

WILD ONION is a theatre/circus show about queer 3 friends. They each go through different challenges and support each other to grow, proving how important chosen family can be. Featuring 100+ onions that are worn, torn, smashed and stripped. 

'A stand out, fun loving, piece of thought-provoking theatre, with joyful & outlandish onion-based theatrics' Norwich Evening News

Combining theatre, circus arts and cabaret forms, WILD ONION offers a new way to tell stories and be entertained. 

We created WILD ONION at Norwich Theatre and have toured it this year to Brighton Fringe, Theatre Peckham, Rose Theatre Kingston, Assembly Edinburgh Fringe and the Royal and Derngate Northampton. 

Where are we touring WILD ONION

We believe in the importance of regional touring, taking our shows to venues across the UK and sharing this powerful story with audiences in their local spaces. We will be reaching audiences and smashing onions in London, Swindon, Nottingham, Eastleigh and Exeter. 

The Ask 

We are asking for £3,500 to cover the upfront marketing costs of the tour and to provide a contingency should our Arts Council England bid come back unsuccessful we won't have to cancel the tour. 

Full disclosure, the submission to the Arts Council we are currently waiting on a response for is our 3rd attempt at funding this tour. The project is clearly in demand from venues and audiences alike, but as Arts Council funding is so competitive there's no guarantee every great project will secure funding. As we wait to get a response our timeline now means we have a cash flow problem for our upfront marketing costs. 

SO we are asking for this money so we can market the show and engage audiences across each region we are touring to and have a contingency to pay performers and creatives fairly without having to cancel the tour in the instance that we don't get our Arts Council grant. 

Composting our onions: A mission to reduce waste and bring new audiences to theatres

Every show we make a lot of 🧅 mess. We gather all the onion waste, and anything that cant be reused or eaten we take to local community gardens to compost. 

We partner with community gardens in every location we tour to, sometimes even more than one. We visit ahead of time, chat about theatre-making and storytelling with the volunteers there. Then we invite them along to the show. 

After the show we compost our onions in their garden. 

Already this year we've engaged 8 community gardens, and in both Brighton and Edinburgh the volunteers that came to watch the show said it was the first time they'd attended something at the festivals in their city. We think that's a pretty big win.

Thank you!

Thank you for supporting our project. You support isn't just monetary its helping to bring a queer story to regional theatres, bring community gardeners into creative spaces and supporting independent artists to create meaningful work.

From all the onion team 🧡