Family Day: Sat 1 November

We're running our successful Family Open Day again this year. There will be something for everyone - activities for under sixes and their families, as well as drama workshops and behind the scenes introductions to the theatre.

Find out more, or just come along on the day.

Shakespeare Flash Mob

Saturday 25th October 4.30pm The lawn outside Northern Stage

Flash Mob: A large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.

Northern Stage would like to invite you to perform.

If you have any interest at all in performing, speaking, listening to, or even vandalising Shakespeare, meet outside on the green in front of Northern Stage at 4.15pm for a one minute performance of your favourite bit of Bard. The flash mob is a culmination of Northern Stage's Looking For Bill project that will take place on Northumberland Street on the same day between 2 and 4pm.

Even if you've never spoken Shakespeare, you are invited to find a speech and come along.

There will be no rehearsals or direction - just one great big (albeit short) celebration of Bard and his words!

Join the Facebook group now!

Happy & Married? photos

Freedom Studios have sent us some new images of Happy & Married?, playing in Stage 2 on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 October. Click on them for the full-size version, or find out more about the show.

Post your Poker stories

Is Poker like life? Or is life like poker?
Have you ever won, only to lose? – Or lost all, only to come up trumps?

Welcome to the ‘poker stories’ blog.

What’s it all about?

Whilst creating a performance at Northern Stage in which a man tells a tale about poker, people started to tell us their own stories, anecdotes and experiences of the game of poker.

Four Men and a Poker Game looks at what happens when you think you can keep winning; regardless of the consequences. You could see it as a story about capitalism – especially at the moment!

We are collecting stories, true tales, tall tales, anecdotes and accounts about big wins and great losses in the world of poker – or the game of life.

So, will you take risks in today’s economic climate?
Are we living our lives like a game of chance?
Have you ever bluffed your way through a situation, with a poker face?

Do you use the following phrases in conversation?
Winner takes all / Coming up trumps / Bluffing / Going all in… Or are there other poker phrases you use in everyday life?

You don’t have to be a poker player to contribute – but just someone with a story to tell!

We are giving away some pairs of free tickets to the Friday and Saturday performances at 9.45 pm – if you send your contact details to info@metisarts.co.uk when you send your story, we will enter you in the draw. The winners will be informed by the 10th November.

Everyone who submits a story will be invited to a launch for the exhibition at Northern Stage, which will combine stories with the history of poker.

You can email us your story – info@metisarts.co.uk – and we will post it in the blog – or just paste your story into the comments section below (don’t forget to email us your contact details if you want to win a free ticket)

Waygood Art Boutique @ Northern Stage

A series of exhibitions featuring art from Waygood Art Boutique can be seen in the Dickinson Dees Room at Northern Stage from September 2008 to January 2009. Open during Northern Stage opening hours (except during private events).



Paintings by Lynda Dodsworth
26 September – 25 October 2008
Reception: 12-2pm on Saturday 4 October 2008

Lynda’s inspiration comes from visiting the alien landscapes of the Durham coast with its blackened beaches.

This once beautiful coastline has been affected by constant change, both natural and by mankind. For over half a century the coal industry were responsible for the heaps of black spoil, which were tipped over the cliffs and onto the beaches below. When the mines closed some of the industrial waste was removed from the beaches, the remaining spoil heaps were then levelled and the natural action of the sea was expected to continue the cleaning process - to some degree.

“I layer paint, organic matter to create a fusion of chemical concoctions. I do not always know how my noxious substances are going to react, but that is the beauty of it, it all becomes part of my work.” – Lynda Dodsworth

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Waygood is an artist-led gallery and studios undergoing a major £7.8million redevelopment to create a new cultural venue on High Bridge in the centre of Newcastle. Whilst the redevelopment continues on the warehouses behind, Waygood Art Boutique, a small selling gallery offering contemporary art by artists associated with Waygood, is open at 31 High Bridge, Newcastle between 12noon and 5pm Wednesdays - Saturdays.

Wang Qingsong: time-lapse video

As part of the Wang Qingsong project, ArtisanCam set up a time-lapse camera to record the events of the day. This is now available to watch online, alongside interviews with the artist and a gallery of his other work.

Follow this link to ArtisanCam

ArtisanCam use a mixture of video and interactive activities to introduce children to the world of contemporary visual art before encouraging them to have a go themselves in fun and exciting ways.

Dr Rowan Williams on Delirium

Dr Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury, has been kind enough to share his views on the script for Theatre O's Delirium - a rework of The Brothers Karamazov.

‘Almost all Dostoevsky’s fiction reads as if it is happening at high temperatures. Rapid and not always comprehensible speech, hallucinatory clarity which suddenly dissolves, baffling changes of emotional register – all these feverish symptoms mean that Dostoevsky’s characters are a lot more than just ‘realistic’ (a word he was suspicious of). But to say that he is the narrator of extremes, extreme circumstances and personalities, doesn’t mean that he has nothing to say to the supposedly ordinary experience of those whose temperature is rather lower.

Dostoevsky assumes that when you put human characters in something of a test situation, where the main thing they have to work at is their own emotions and interaction, you discover some – most – of the things that really drive them. You discover the questions that they are afraid to ask and the beliefs they are afraid to own in other circumstances. This makes sense of the way in which he handles issues about religious belief, a theme important in all his work but particularly prominent inBrothers Karamazov: the reality or otherwise of God isn’t to be settled by arguing about ideas. Put your speakers or characters to the test of extreme experience and you’ll see whether the possibility of God is or isn’t around; you’ll see whether someone is fundamentally wounded or crippled by the absence of God, whether the presence of God makes possible actions that fly in the face of bourgeois common sense. Dostoevsky is not very interested in arguments about religion between people with normal temperatures, because they don’t reveal the truth – which, for him, is that belief and unbelief are bound up with basic issues of sanity, self-knowledge and the imperatives of compassion beyond calculation. And, as Karamazov makes abundantly clear, they are bound up also with how you understand the way you have been parented, the way in which you’ve first learned how to be loved – or failed to learn this; and the nature of the images you then carry around with you which determine your sense of who or what you are responsible to.

Dramatising Dostoevsky means finding theatrical equivalents for the sense of soaring temperatures, not just reproducing the plot and dialogue of the novel. This playattempts to do just that, looking for ways of translating the violence, the terrible poignancy and the pitch-dark comedy of one of the greatest European writers of fiction.’

Delirium plays at Northern Stage from Tue 28 October - Sat 1 November. Tickets range from £5.50 to £18.50 and can be booked online or by calling our box office on 0191 230 5151. There are two for one tickets available for the first night.

Find out more about Delirium

The Bloody Chamber: Matinee added / Production shots

Due to the sell-out success of The Bloody Chamber, we've added a Saturday matinee on 11 October at 2pm. You can book online or by calling our Box Office on 0191 230 5151.

Tickets are not available for any other performance.

Visit the show page and you'll also be able to see a selection of production shots.