June 21st, 2019

It occurs to me that the story of how Circle of Spears began as a company is not something that we've talked about much in a public forum so here for the first time I shall present an abridged version of how we all ended up making audiobooks and theatre together.

Back in 2015 I met Tracey and subsequently Mark as we actory types often do through a show Tracey and I were part of. Shortly after, Tracey invited me to take part in a freelance audio project she and Mark were working on. The project itself was fun enough to do but the person behind it was less than stellar. Having enjoyed collaborating on someone else's project though we were keen to do one of our own. We all had our own home recording set ups, we all had a background in theatre and the performing arts, pooling our resources seemed like the obvious thing to do.

​People sometimes ask us where the name Circle of Spears came from. There are two answers to this, both equally true. The first is that the image of a group of individuals coming together to create something greater than the sum of their parts is something that has always been very intrinsic to our ethos as a company. So long as there are enough spears to form a circle (two or more) we had a group of creatives whose skill sets and enthusiasm constantly fed back into the whole group. Initially there were five members of Circle of Spears and we've had as many as eight working on a project at one time but the number of individuals doesn't matter, what they create together that they couldn't create alone is the thing that matters. The second answer is at the time we founded the company I was running a Dungeons and Dragons game featuring everyone who was in the company at that time and the group of adventurers they were playing as in that game were also called The Circle of Spears. The real life parallels of comradeship, shared goals and values was not something lost on any of us.

In the four years, numerous productions and now over twenty audiobooks that have followed we've had our ups and downs, people have come and gone, but our goals and what keeps us coming back to the company remains the same. We all want to make a living bringing stories to life and doing things together it would be impossible to do alone.

-Sam