Sofie Mason's Page

What I do... (Actor, director, designer, teacher etc?)

I have set up www.offwestend.com - a collective website for over 50 theatres off the mainstream. It's great for people like me who want to find out what's on quickly and don't want to look far - and it helps me truffle around the history of these funny little theatres, read up on the shows and use an easy map to find my way there. It didn't exist so I had to invent it! I'm also working for an advertising agency in Islington and writing articles forThe Stage newspaper. When I'm not doing any of that, I'm eating pasta and setting the world to right!

My Quick CV

Born in Italy to an English artist and a bookseller who had fled the grey UK of the late 1950s, I grew up in Rome and Naples, scraped into Oxford to wallow in English Literature, made no impression whatsoever one summer as an actress on the Edinburgh Fringe and spent ten years pretending to be a serious sales force in the world of newspaper and magazine publishing. From 1994 I abandoned the commercial world to join the Royal Opera House where I became the Head of Sales in the Marketing Department and the first woman Union Branch Secretary for backstage staff - in both roles I sought to be as dramatic as possible. By 2004 I had fallen in love with small theatres and left to start my own company, Theatre Partnerships, and co-founded the website, OffWestEnd.com, as part of a campaign to put Off West End theatres on the map and make them as recognisable and as popular a destination as Off Broadway, the Edinburgh Fringe and the West End itself. Tireless in my networking for a good cause and shameless in my pursuit of glamour, you will find me at most first nights and fundraising parties but I am happiest any old night just enjoying a good play tucked into the warm darkness of a small auditorium above a pub, under a railway bridge or in a converted clothing factory with some of the most talented actors and directors of today. I recommend you join me!

The first thing that inspired me in theatre...

..was going as a child in Italy and being mesmerised by the power of story-telling up close and personal seeing every muscle of an actor's face!

My favourite theatre something is...

...not bothering with an interval and going straight through!

The thing that annoys me about our industry...

....is how uncomfortable people feel about the word 'fringe' when we should embrace it and be proud - Edinburgh did!

My website

http://offwestend.com

Another website I'd like to plug

http://finkennedy.co.uk