Alastair Palmer

Alastair studied Theatre Production at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked extensively in the West End and with some of the UK’s most prestigious touring theatre companies. With Betsy Blatchley, he founded Factotum Theatre Company as Artistic Director and also ran the Young People’s Performing Arts company Freedom Street.

After graduating from RADA, Alastair worked with theatre companies that included Joint Stock, Cambridge Theatre Company, the Tricycle and the Royal National Theatre, as well as on West End productions including Annie, Pirates and Anyone for Denis? For Factotum Theatre Company, Alastair directed plays and musicals ranging from Shakespeare to Coward and Sheridan to Mamet at theatres up and down the country. He also wrote stage adaptations of classic novels and Dragon King  (a version of the Morte d’Arthur), as well as a new version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

He also devised popular touring variety shows, featuring classic songs and sketches from the 1920s and 30s, including Holiday Time and Curtain Up on Christmas. He subsequently devised and directed Party Time, about the rise in recreational drug use, for Nottinghamshire County Council’s Education Department. In 1999 he directed Life Goals, a project with young unaccompanied refugees from Kosovo, for the Royal National Theatre’s Education Department. This project was filmed by Worldwide Pictures and shown internationally as part of the UK Today series.

Following its success, Alastair founded Freedom Street, a charity dedicated to setting up and running performing arts and media projects. Over the next decade, the charity worked with hundreds of disadvantaged young people, mainly from some of the most deprived estates in London, many of whom went on to drama schools and university performing arts courses.

While running Freedom Street, he also directed plays for the Performing Arts courses of Uxbridge College, including Epsom Downs, As You Like It, Can You Keep a Secret? and Road.

Most recently Alastair directed a charity performance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black musical, Tell Me on a Sunday and devised and wrote the new musical revue Get Hot! He is currently working on the stage production of Get Hot! which is provisionally scheduled for Spring 2024.