Two performers smiling and standing in floral decorated costumes.

Tiny & Tall Productions is a theatre company making joyful, original and accessible theatre productions that bring together intergenerational audiences in a range of diverse spaces.

It is run by Tessa Bide and Alice Massey, and grows to involve teams of creatives for each project (including performers, directors, composers, designers, makers and other professionals).

We make and tour theatre productions. We run outreach and educational workshops for all ages. We consult and mentor emerging artists and share our knowledge and experience.

We aim to bring joy, encourage understanding, and change people’s lives for the better. We want to show that theatre with and for audiences of diverse ages can be just as exciting, ground breaking and challenging as theatre for adult audiences. We want to support emerging artists and companies to make new work and offer our expertise to guide them.

Our mission is to use the magic of high quality theatre to bring together intergenerational audiences and to tell stories that help us, and others, to make sense of the world and our place in it.

“An engrossing show that is full of compassion”
- The Guardian ★★★★

“Beautifully crafted”
- Bristol 24/7

“ The beauty of this play will remain for a long time to come.”
- Curious Mum

“Sophisticated and sensitive in its storytelling, exquisite in its design and, best of all, really trusts its young audience.”
- Children’s Theatre Reviews

“What Bide’s performance offers is characteristic of the warmth and inclusivity that proper family theatre should always aspire to; the real sense that she is delighted to welcome the youngest and the oldest audience members and to hold them in the same space.”
- Bristol 24/7

Our Story

Tiny & Tall started as Tessa Bide Productions… which started as Tessa - a woman from salty South-West Dorset - sitting on park benches, trains, beaches, and at kitchen tables writing stories. In 2013 Tessa made her first production, a solo show called The Tap Dancing Mermaid. She reached out to her brilliant friends for help with the music, puppet-making and story-shaping and made something that people seemed to really enjoy. And the most important thing was that it made tiny and tall people talk to each other, both as excitedly as each other.
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Since then, Tessa has had the pleasure of creating innovative productions for intergenerational audiences with some of the best creatives in the UK. We partner with schools, charities, venues and organisations who can support us to make the work the highest quality possible. These shows have toured to rural village halls to the Royal Albert Hall, car parks in Christchurch and national theatres in the Netherlands. No two shows have ever looked the same, but at the core of every production is a story that we think will spark interesting conversations between the generations.
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In 2018, Alice Massey joined the team as Assistant Producer, and later, Producer, and the company went from strength to strength… even surviving a global pandemic. We have continued to run outreach workshops and training opportunities for people both tiny and tall, from key stage one to care homes, and everyone in between.

In early 2024, we changed our name to Tiny and Tall Productions to truly sum up what we do and who our work is for. We’re not slowing down and our aim is to become one of the UK’s leading companies of innovative, genre-defying theatre for people of all ages.

Our Team

Tessa Bide - Artistic Director
‍Tessa is a theatre maker, producer and performer. She started making professional theatre in 2010 because she loves to tell stories and to spark interesting conversations between the generations. Tessa is a Resident Artist of Pervasive Media Studio and an Associate Artist of Puppet Place in Bristol. She also freelances as a director, producing consultant, workshop facilitator and puppetry director. Tessa strongly believes that the theatre industry can be a difficult place to earn a crust, so the more everyone can help eachother out - sharing knowledge, resources, and contacts - the better. More information on her consulting work can be found here. She teaches regularly, from children up to professional practitioners, and loves nothing more than to see a group of people waggling puppets at each other and laughing.

‍Alice Massey - Producer
Alice is a theatre producer working across a range of projects, with a special interest in work for children, young people and their families. She is passionate about projects which spark imagination, encourage curiosity and bring a little magic into our lives.
Alice is interested in making theatre which is as close to carbon neutral as possible and has completed Carbon Literacy training. She often runs tailored workshops and consultancy sessions with companies and artists to develop their environmental policies and ways of working. Find out more on her website.
Alongside her work as a Producer, Alice is also a dance teacher and facilitator, working with dancers of all ages, in genres including Ballet, Tap, Jazz and Musical Theatre. Alice often works as Movement Director too, supporting the movement led elements of productions.