Who

LaPelle’s Factory is the creative partnership between theatre makers
Olwen Davies and Ollie Smith

“Ollie Smith and Olwen Davies ooze charm and darkness in equal measure, like some old fashioned double act gone off the rails“
Richard Lowden,
Forced Entertainment

Hello. We’re Olwen and Ollie. We make shows.

We’re like the couple-next-door but you shouldn’t trust us with your pets. Olwen has the most dangerous eyes in contemporary theatre, and if Ollie was in a film about a drug cartel he’d be the one who gets shot in the face within the first 10 minutes.

On stage we play the versions of ourselves we don’t want to be day-to-day. Those people are strange.

“Olwen and Ollie are great artists – full of ideas, great performers, and curious and exploratory in their making – fearless in trying out new things and prepared to thoroughly interrogate their material”
Alex Kelly, Third Angel

The first piece we made together was a purgatorial cabaret-gone-wrong called Cat in Hell (2013). We thought it was about entrapment but the people who saw it thought it was about BDSM. Who knew? Since then we’ve tackled killer couples, cults, dance marathons, school sports days and rodeos, and we’ve taken serious liberties with literary adaptation.

As individuals we’ve worked with other artists and companies including Proto-type Theater, Forced Entertainment, Maison Foo, Zoo Indigo, El Conde de Torrefiel, Spiltmilk Dance, Michael Pinchbeck, Reckless Sleepers and New Perspectives.

“A refreshing duo making playful work that delves deep into the human condition. Ollie and Olwen’s impressive individual experience as performers and theatre makers can be clearly seen not only in their performance but the way they approach making their work”
Ruby Glaskin, Milk Presents/In Good Company

As well as making work, we lecture in theatre and performance within higher education institutions including the University of Lincoln, the University of Derby, De Montfort University (Leicester) and the University of Worcester. Our focus is contemporary practice and live art. We also deliver bespoke workshops, masterclasses and creative residencies in performance, theatre making and devising at theatres, arts centres and festivals.