Katherine MacAlister chats to a co-founder of Idle Motion ahead of their return to the city

Kate Stanley is nervous about coming back to Oxford, even though she co-founded and runs Idle Motion, a hugely successful theatre company.

There is no need. The last time That Is All You Need To Know opened at Oxford Playhouse it sold out, hence the invitation to return.

No, Kate is nervous because this is her home town, where Idle Motion was born, so treading the boards at the Oxford Playhouse means a lot.

“Coming back to Oxford will be amazing, but we get more nervous about playing here because we grew up here and saw so much theatre ourselves at the Oxford Playhouse, so when you get out on stage and look at the 608 faces staring back it can be quite daunting. Even though we don’t normally get nervous, Oxford is so special,” she explains.

Idle Motion was formed at Cherwell School in Summertown by students studying drama there. That Is All You Need To Know is based on Bletchley Park, and aims to celebrate some of Britain’s greatest minds, such as Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman, as well as the thousands of dynamic women who lived there and worked together.

Their story is looped together with the groundbreaking volunteers who gathered to save Bletchley Park, the home of the Enigma code breakers, from developers in the 1990s.

“We went to Bletchley Park and walked around and it was so inspiring. 10,000 people worked there during the war, and yet it was so secretive that many never spoke of their time there. So this is their story. We felt it was an important subject to share with a new generation,” Kate says.

Bringing the play back to Oxford after 18 months is therefore really exciting. Kate says: “It sold out last time, so there were lots of people who didn’t get to see it. People seemed to really like it.”

Having met at Cherwell School, Idle Motion was only formed in 2008 to take a show to Edinburgh Fringe. When the show sold out and they were nominated for a Fringe Award, they had a rethink.

“We never intended this to be our job, or anything to come of it,” Kate laughs, but in 2009 Idle Notion went professional. Since then it has made six shows and bring out a new one every year, while touring at home and abroad.

“We are collaborative so write, direct, design and act together and take it in turns,” Kate, the co-director of That is All You Need to Know says. “The core of the company is still Cherwell alumni, still people I went to school with nine years ago.”

So what does Idle Motion specialise in? “We generally make shows about things we are interested in, and work very visually, so in this instance Bletchley Park was enormously inspiring from that point of view.

“One of our shows is about aviation, there is another about Robert Capa, his photography and his part in the Spanish Civil War. It means we have a very diverse audience.”

Always busy, Idle Motion is only here for one night on Monday. “Last year we spent a month in China, then spent six weeks on tour, with a week in London. We had a new play out in March, another one on the boil and are preparing to go on tour. We are always challenging ourselves.”

What would Kate put their success down to? “An amazing teacher, Paul Slater, at Cherwell, and the Oxford Playhouse has always encouraged us. All in all, it’s been quite a journey.”

SEE IT
Oxford Playhouse’s Associate Artists Idle Motion return to the Oxford Playhouse with That is All You Need to Know on Monday.
Call 01865 305305 or see oxfordplayhouse.com