The Winner of Tina's Trophy 2025 - Kay Francksen!
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Every year Next Stage Theatre Company awards one lucky member Tina’s Trophy. It is a recognition of Excellence in Theatre, initiated in 2019 for the company’s Silver Anniversary. Since then it has become a yearly opportunity to recognise company members who have gone above and beyond both on and offstage.
On Sunday 27th April we had the pleasure of being able to present Tina’s Trophy for 2025 to Kay Francksen. Kay has been a member of the company for over 25 years and have been in nearly 50 shows, she is also a committed and reliable member of our volunteer team and more recently has taken to running a number of accent workshops with Next Stage Youth.
Accepting the trophy with delight, Kay spoke of her honour to be recognised for this award, remarking that what she loves the most about Next Stage is its sense of family, where everyone is truly passionate about their love of theatre and stagecraft.
Kay’s first Next Stage show was Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge in 1999 and from then she went on to leading roles in Miller’s other iconic plays. She has become one of the most experienced actors in the company with close to 50 Next Stage performances to her credit, including three (soon to be four) trips to the open-air Minack Theatre on the cliffs at Porthcurno. Kay isn’t a stranger to one-woman and two-hander performances, having starred in Shirley Valentine, My Brilliant Divorce and Intimate Exchanges on multiple occasions over the years.
Kay has taken part in some significant Next Stage tours, including two weeks in New York in 2008 performing in an off-Broadway festival in Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exhanges. This tour was followed a year later with one to the Jermyn Street Theatre in London’s West End, where Kay performed over three weeks in Torch Song Trilogy.
Audiences last saw Kay onstage in A Monster Calls in November 2024 and she will be appearing in our Minack run on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in July.
Recently Kay has worked alongside other company members as an accent coach for Next Stage Youth, helping our talented youngsters to perform with excellent and convincing Liverpudlian accents during their March production of Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers. She will be helping to run further accent sessions for the youthers throughout the Summer term, much to their excitement!
Kay has also been a devoted member of our front-of-house team over the years, always consistent in showing up to support Next Stage and The Mission Theatre off-stage, despite living nearly an hour’s drive away!
There is so much we have to thank Kay for, and we hope that the awarding of Tina’s Trophy for 2025 not only demonstrates our immense thanks for all she has done but also recognises her talent and contributions to the company and what it has become. Thank you, Kay!
