2025/26 and PMac has continued his collaboration with Ragged Edge Productions swapping a cowboy hat for an eye patch and parrot in as they tour their new venture ‘The Mystery of the Pirate Lagoon’ . An onstage radio play with audience sound effects it follows the adventures of rival Pirate Captains – Thorsen & Starkers!
A new project with previous collaborator Grace Kirby, ‘Welded’ , is on the table after a successful showing at Theatre by the Lake’s Open Space night in October. More news on that soon.
To see out 2026 ‘A Dickens of a Christmas’, an evening of dramatised readings from the pen of Dickens, is performed by PMac at Theatre by the Lake, Dec 2-5th.
A new PMac Production in conjunction with ‘bigupnorth’ toured in 2025. ‘The Butterfly Collector’ is the third piece of work with that title Peter has written. The first two were short films, commissioned in lockdown, written, performed and filmed by Peter – there are links to the videos on You Tube on this website. They stand as complete pieces in their own right but Peter has always described them as works in progress (see below). This latest stage iteration completes the trilogy and the work has progressed from 5 minute film to 45 minute play.
‘The Butterfly Collector’ is half of a double bill of one person shows. ‘Nancy’s Orange’, written & performed by Cumbrian actress Grace Kirby, completes the bill. The two plays are very different and yet they are also linked. Intriguing eh? What’s more intriguing is Peter and Grace directed each other! They giggled alot.
There is just as much giggling when Peter hits the stage with two colleagues in ‘The Mystery of the Blue Moon Saloon’.A joint production with Ragged Edge Productions, it’s a ‘comedy-western-who-dunnit-radio-play’ which has been yeeha-ing around village halls and giving out ‘radio guns’ to posses from South Wales to Northumberland since 2022.
He is still out there on his own though as Old Herbaceous enters his twelfth year dispensing geranium cuttings and snail advice and Mr Scrooge continues to tell his own side of that charlatan Dickens Christmas story.
PMac 2024
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Peter’s touring projects were slightly interrupted in 2020, with only one live, socially distanced performance accomplished – the good people of Kelsington & Brigsteer ‘Humbugging’ along with Mr Scrooge. But since the rival Covid tour has eased off, the PMac trailer has got out on the road again with his greenhouse and ‘Old Herbaceous’ has dispensed invaluable gardening tips to audiences in Cheshire, Cumbria, County Durham, Northumbria and Dorset. Capacity houses (within the regulations of the moment)have much appreciated getting out to live theatre again it seems.
Sets duly swapped around, ‘The Scrooge Diaries’ will be off to make people miserable (only joking….Bah!) around Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire & nearer home in good old Cumbria.
But 2020 was not all about sitting doing nothing and with commissions from both Spot On Rural Touring and Kirkgate Arts, Peter entered the world of film-making…..ie sticking his Nikon Coolpix on a tripod and pointing it at himself! The result is four 5 minute films of, appropriately, ‘Characters in Isolation’, three of whom are old friends – ‘The Gardener’, ‘The Professor’ and ‘Ebenezer’, and a fourth – ‘The Butterfly Collector’. This new character, was then developed into a 30 minute film and Peter is hoping to develop this work further and create another live touring show.
So the PMac trailer and live theatre are both up and running again, and PMac films has also sprung into life. Something good out of something bad (….well you can be the judge of that!) and there’s even a Christmas video
– ‘Christmas in bed with Mr. Scrooge.’!
PMac 2021
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A country boy – born, brought up and educated in Leicestershire and Rutland, Peter lived in Manchester and Bristol before gravitating to London where he lived south of the river for over 20 years, before finally admitting that the city really wasn’t the place he wanted to spend the rest of his days… or nights.
In 2003, a month spent at the Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, dressed in a gold lame’ jacket, singing Elvis numbers on a roof in the evening and exploring the Cumbrian countryside by day, allowed a seed to be sown.
In 2007, lured by the offer to play George in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ at Keswick (the offer came one very wet afternoon whilst knee deep in the mud of a landscape project in London – Peter is also a garden designer), Peter spent seven months in the Lake District and the seed began to germinate.
In 2011, whilst performing in another summer season, Peter was completely consumed by the metaphor and finally put down roots in Cumbria permanently with his partner Jax and their daughter Millie – a true Cumbrian, having been born in Penrith during Peter’s second season in 2009.
With further seasons at his local theatre in 2013 and 2015 and a couple of Christmas productions thrown in for festive purposes (Bah!), Peter has been lucky enough to be able to combine work ‘from home’ with child care fun and also re-kindling his passion for nature in his beautiful Cumbrian surroundings – the binoculars always at hand and the Moth trap regularly switched on!
Since moving north Peter has also re -generated his creative urge and fulfilled two long-held ambitions – to perform a one-man show and to write a play. With enthusiastic support from the entire team at Theatre by the Lake, Rural Touring Schemes and the local community, Peter has gone on to set up PMac Productions in a quest to continue his touring work in the North and who knows… maybe even back down to SE London.