Tribute to Michael

Technical Director and co-writer for GlovesOff Productions, Michael Elphick sadly died in January 2010, after a courageous battle with cancer. Michael worked as a free-lance lighting designer and practitioner for numerous companies over many years, and from 2001 – 2009 with Patricia Hartshorne, with whom he formed GlovesOff Productions in 2003. Together they toured as far as Dublin and California, and throughout the UK – from large theatres to fringe and cabaret venues, where Michael always ran sound and light single-handed.

His final work as GlovesOff was in November 2009. Despite deteriorating mobility and pain, he was determined to fulfil a long-standing booking at the Heron Theatre in Cumbria. Negotiating the ladders up into the lighting-box, and working both sound and light, he ran two performances of 'ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE' to full houses. Forever inventive, he found a way.

Michael brought to GlovesOff Productions his skills as a writer and lighting designer, his humour, his ingenuity, his professionalism and his sense of calm – whatever the challenge. When the company is up and running again in February 2011, the influence and inspiration of Michael Elphick will still be very much at work – his courage and determination a reminder that anything is possible.