VILLAGE halls are not the typical venues for professional theatrical performances but for Arts Alive it is their chosen task to bring the unexpected to rural venues.

Working in partnership with local people the promotional company, set up five years ago, has brought to villages and towns in Herefordshire and Shropshire high quality opera, drama, dance and circus to isolated venues.

Bosbury, Ledbury and Whitbourne will all welcome Arts Alive this autumn.

Sian Allen, Arts Alive co-ordinator, said: "We aim to make live professional performances affordable and accessible. It's a way of reaching new audiences and making it fair. By making it local you get a lot more people coming."

Tomorrow (Saturday), Hijinx Theatre will perform Ill Met by Moonlight at the Market Theatre in Ledbury, starting at 7.30pm.

Described as a haunting, magical love story set in the Welsh borders between the real world and the earthly world, the play centres around the last of the fairy folk, Booka. Tickets £5 from 01531 633760.

Also tomorrow, at 8pm, at Whitbourne's brand new village hall, Rejects Revenge will present its unique blend of physical comedy in The Bicycle Bridge.

Following two lovers, the dark musical comedy is set in a city under siege where life has to go on. Tickets are £5 from 01886 821955.

In Bosbury Village Hall on Friday, November 30, at 7.30pm, the North Country Theatre group perform comic spoof theatre with 2001 - A Space Idiocy. In this show, life as we know it is threatened when a huge meteorite emerges from a black hole. Tickets cost £5 and are available from 01531 640415.