Ten years ago there was a crack of thunder, the heavens opened and my son was born.

As a new parent the full scale of just how much rain had fallen that morning didn’t hit home until my parents spent half the day struggling to get to Oxfordshire on a stationary M40 due to flooding in Oxford.

At that point I had no idea of the devastation the weather would be causing down the road to the ten-year-old Creation Theatre Company.

The early noughties had been kind to Oxford’s largest open-air theatre company, with audiences growing year on year and a peak of 30,000 people seeing Creation shows in a single season in 2006.

In 2007, Creation had three summer shows of Hamlet, Taming of the Shrew and The Passion at the newly re-developed Oxford Castle complex.

But such dramatically wet weather in the following years decimated sales and emergency fund raising was quickly needed to save the company from obliteration.

Creation became a registered charity and in a drive to diversify income streams, and leaving a far more sensible job, Creation founder and Chief Executive David Parrish persuaded me to come on board as Education Manager to grow Creation’s work for children.

For the next five years Creation still had the occasional damp summer, so moved to the Said Business School rooftop amphitheatre with its indoor lecture theatre as a wet weather back up.

But then 2012 hit, a month's worth of rainfall fell on our opening performance of The Merchant of Venice and we found ourselves in serious financial difficulties again.

We came the closest we ever have to closing down but miraculously the people of Oxford saved us, with a response to our emergency fundraising appeal raising £50,000.

Some solid years and fantastic shows later we have slowly rebuilt the company's finances to a safer level, but 2017 is proving why we need a financial buffer.

We are incredibly fortunate that this year we have two weather-proof shows on. Alice is housed inside a glorious big top in University Parks, and Dream takes places in numerous secret locations many of which are indoors.

We’ve had several evenings over the last week where the rain has refused to let up and it has been with immense pride that our shows have been able to continue and out audiences have experienced the shows with very little changed on how the show would be on a sunny evening.

These are with out doubt two of our best shows, Alice is colourful, fun, silly and great for all the family, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream really truly is an experience like no other. You really are poorer if you don’t experience for yourself what the fuss is about.

Ticket sales are down because many people don’t realise just how resilient these shows are to the weather. They are resilient, though, and we as a company are resilient to the weather now, all we need now is for the wonderful people of Oxford to be resilient too, don their raincoats and join us for some truly magical theatre.