Guest Blog: Director Olivia Jacobs On THE GRUFFALO

We first came across Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's now much-loved book The Gruffalo in 1999, the year it was published. My co-artistic director Toby was working as an editor for Macmillan Children's Books (the Gruffalo publishers), and we thought it was a brilliant story that might work well on stage for children aged 3+ and their grown-ups.

Away from our day jobs, Toby and I had been running Tall Stories Theatre Company since 1997. We had taken a few shows up to the Edinburgh Fringe - including two based on classic stories that had proven popular with families who, after the shows, told us how pleased they were to find high-quality work for a family audience. At the time there wasn't much crossover work touring. So we didn't set out to be a company that produced shows for families - we just wanted to tell great stories really well.

The first performance of The Gruffalo was at the Chester Gateway Theatre in 2001, followed by a UK-wide tour of small-scale venues. Back then we had three actors touring in a car with no stage manager - so we always had to have one actor behind the set to press play on a minidisc player at the start of each sound cue.

As the book has grown to classic status, our little show has also evolved and widened its reach. The set and costumes have been much updated and redesigned over the years - and I'm pleased to say that we do now tour with a stage manager and a laptop for sound cues!

The show has been performed in 15 different countries - in some of which the book is much less well-known. Often we'll take a British cast abroad for a short run in Asia, for example, or a tour of North America, but we've also worked with companies abroad to produce their own local versions of the production, sometimes in another language.

We currently have a touring South African production which will soon be performed in both English and isiXhosa, and we're working with a company in Israel to create a production there for next year. We want our shows to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible - which is why we're thrilled that we've been able to find a partner company in Israel who will produce the show in both Hebrew and Arabic.

When we created the show there were fewer productions around for very young children, though there has since been an explosion of work in this genre. A lot of these shows, like The Gruffalo, tend to be based on well-known brands or titles, which does unfortunately mean that shows based on lesser-known or original stories have a much harder time finding an audience.

As a non-funded charity, we produce small-scale original work alongside more commercial shows. The larger shows help to subsidise the smaller ones - which usually works out well. Our hope is that if a family comes to see a show based on a story they know and they have a brilliant experience, they'll be encouraged to return to the theatre again and try something that perhaps they haven't heard of before.

Along with many other companies, we've noticed a decrease in school bookings for shows in the past few years, which we think is due to cuts in school arts budgets (and new rules regarding cover for teachers on school trips). Although we'd love to get more school classes into an actual theatre we realise that sometimes you need to go to them.

This autumn The Gruffalo had performances in the West End at weekends only, so during the week the cast performed a new show called Future Perfect, which toured to Year 6 classes in London primary schools. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for schools to book the show, so we created it to be performed in classrooms - at no cost to the school.

The show was a time-travel story around the theme of decision-making, targeted at Year 6 children who are about to go to secondary school and face new choices. We had great feedback following this autumn's tour, and we're hoping to repeat the project next year.

The Gruffalo will be coming to the end of a long West End season on 8 January, so that we can take it out on the road again from next summer. We're looking forward to reaching more new audiences and new countries next year - watch this space!

The Gruffalo is at Lyric Theatre until 8 January, 2017