“My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you…” Jane Austen, 1813
India Farnham chats to Bath Abbey Missioner Rev. Betsy Blatchley and Matt Emeny, co-founder of The Production Garden, about their upcoming production of Pride and Prejudice, the unlikely parallels between theatre and church, and why all you need is love…
What comes to mind when I ask you to imagine the theatre? If you’re anything like me, it’s a particular building. A building with a box office, a stage, a sweeping red curtain and tiered seating. A building where you can buy an ice cream from a tiny cool box in the interval. A building with four walls which a ticket grants you entry to.
But what if it didn’t have to be? And what if opening up those four walls could allow more members of our community to delight in live entertainment?
Enter (stage right) The Production Garden.
The Production Garden is an award-winning live theatre company, based in Bath, which is behind some of the South West’s most exciting theatrical experiences.
From an immersive ‘Meet Santa’ event at The Holburne; to a full-scale Garden Theatre Festival; to a candle-lit Mumford and Sons tribute-cum-theatre show at the iconic Bath Abbey, The Production Garden has been pushing the boundaries of what theatre can do since its inception.
So… what is theatre?
For Matt Emeny, co-founder of The Production Garden (and one of its three core team members), it was those four, rigid theatre walls, and their difficulty to pass through, which inspired him to think differently about theatre as a young, ambitious producer.
“I remember when I was first starting out, a producer once said to me that a theatre is just a rope on the floor, with one person performing on one side, and another person watching on the other. It was that that made me realise ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t have to be knocking on the door with 10,000 other young producers to try and get into this theatre building. I can create theatre anywhere.’”
“The Production Garden began with a tweet to my co-founder Josh Beaumont. I was like, ‘Are you still producing? Great, then let’s put on ‘Wind of the Willows’ and do an outdoor tour.’
“So that’s how we started, and then from there we just expanded and expanded, and now The Production Garden has grown into this incredible company that produces large-scale commercial theatre.”
And whilst The Production Garden have put on a plethora of traditional, touring theatre productions, including their successful, tongue-in-cheek series of Shoddy plays (their words, not mine) from A Shoddy Christmas Carol to A Shoddy Detective, the company continues to have a focus on creating theatre in unconventional spaces.
Why is it so important to Matt to lay his figurative theatre rope in such uncharted territory?
“I think theatre can sometimes feel like something serious. Like something that’s only for a particular sort of person, someone who understands it. But I don’t think that’s true. I think if a production is really good, then everyone will enjoy it.”
Coming together
It was this desire to utilise unconventional spaces that brought The Production Garden to Bath Abbey.
“We [The Production Garden team] saw that people were doing candle-lit shows, so we called up Fay, the Events Manager at Bath Abbey, and pitched to her a candle-lit Mumford and Sons show. We had 600 people come and watch that production, so we knew we were onto something special with this venue.”
Something special indeed. But whilst using the space was beneficial to The Production Garden in elevating their production, the team at Bath Abbey had their reasons for opening their doors to theatre too.
“It’s important to us here to find ways to appeal to people who might not otherwise come in,” Rev. Betsy Blatchley tells me. “I think people can have similar anxieties about entering a church as they do with entering a theatre. People perhaps find it a bit intimidating, or they’re not sure about what to do within a religious space.”
“So having theatre here is about changing people’s perceptions, about allowing people to find another space that they feel comfortable in. It’s about belonging.”
Rev. Betsy, who joined Bath Abbey in 2025 after seven years as Pioneer Minister in the Arts in Nine Elms, also has a background in theatre.
“I trained as a performer, and, similarly to Matt, set up my own touring company with my husband in order to have more control over where we could work,” she explains.
“From there, I morphed into a producer, and worked for various different organisations before eventually ending up at The National Theatre for five years. That’s when I got the call to ordination, which was a bit of a shock, because I had never wanted to do anything other than theatre since I was about three!”
Does Rev. Betsy see the theatre and the church, her two places of work, as similar in any way?
“I do think the two things come together when you think about that sense of awe, of breathlessness, that you get from being truly wowed by something,” she enthuses. “The church and the theatre have always had a really interesting relationship. Throughout history the church has used theatre to communicate the Biblical story through mystery plays, miracle plays, and nativities. In fact, many people’s first experience with theatre is through the nativity plays.
“And yet,” she continues, “If you go back to the Civil War era, the theatre has also been looked at by the church as something a bit frivolous, something that good Christian people shouldn’t have anything to do with.
“So, I’m passionate about reclaiming theatre in the church. Jesus was a storyteller, you know, and his stories were for people who maybe couldn’t read, or couldn’t access those stories themselves. The arts have always been about inclusion.”
All aboard to theatre-land
It’s certainly not hard to imagine why The Abbey works as a place of performance; as Matt points out to me, the space is literally designed to lift singing voices, to make music sound wonderful.
What do the team at the Abbey look for when deciding what theatre works in their surroundings?
“I think what’s really important to us is that a production has a level of site-specificity built into the show,” Betsy shares. “We’re not interested in just putting on a show and pretending we’re somewhere else entirely. For us, a production really needs to feel at home here.”
How will The Production Garden’s new take on Pride and Prejudice utilise this epic space?
“Our musical director, Sam Freeman, is tweaking the songs so we can work with the Abbey’s natural choral acoustics,” Matt explains. “Of course, we want to play with the grandeur of the space, so we’ve also got some really beautiful costumes and lighting, as well.”
Meet the Bennets
To state the (glaringly) obvious, many of us here in Bath are already familiar with Pride and Prejudice, either because we’re already fans of Jane Austen (do we have any Janeites present?) or simply because seeing a regency-clad gentlemen wandering around Royal Crescent is just your average Tuesday in Bath.
What do Matt and Rev. Betsy see as the reason behind this enduring appeal?
“I think Pride and Prejudice gets to the heart of human nature. It’s about love, and fundamentally, we all crave to be loved,” Betsy shares, warmly.
“It’s why we love a wedding!” Matt agrees. “It’s universally heart-warming watching two people commit their love to each other. We’re all rooting for Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to be together.”
This familiarity with the source text is important to the show’s appeal, Matt tells me. “People know and love Pride and Prejudice, so there’s no risk involved with choosing to go and see it. Our job, though, is to take that classic piece of literature and excite it up.”
Ooo, that sounds… exciting. What does a shaken-up Pride and Prejudice look like?
“It’s a very funny production,” Matt shares, cracking a smile. “We always say that our actors are just confidently silly people. It’s also about drawing out the humour in the text. The Bennets are made out to be really poor. When really, they own a manor house and servants, so they’re not exactly destitute!” he laughs.
“And I do think it’s fun for all the family,” Matt continues. “If you brought your ten-year-old to this show, they might not understand the social complexities of Jane Austen’s Britain, but they will find Darcy jumping into the lake absolutely hilarious.”
Divine destiny
At this point in our conversation, there seemed to be so much synergy between The Production Garden and Bath Abbey’s mission, it really did feel like fate that Pride and Prejudice would be performed, here in Bath, in this epic place of love.
I simply had to ask Matt if he ever expected, back when he sent his friend Josh a tweet in lockdown, that The Production Garden would make it to Bath Abbey?
“No, absolutely not! We’ve never had a plan. Everything has just grown so organically. We’re so grateful for anyone who spends their hard-earned money on one of our productions; we just hope to leave people with a smile on their face.”
And what about Bath Abbey, will it continue to evolve as a venue for theatre, I ask Rev. Betsy?
“Definitely. A big part of our mission is to connect with the city. I’d love to get to a point where we’re more of a co-creating space, a space where people feel they can collaborate freely.
“I just know that when you put a few creatives in the room, exciting things happen. And that’s exactly what we want to do going forwards.”
Well then, how about a few dozen creatives, hundreds of audience members, and a handful of well-loved Austen characters? That will surely be something special…
Catch Pride and Prejudice at Bath Abbey from 7 – 17 April.
Book tickets online via bathabbey.org | theproductiongarden.co.uk