Christmas 2008 audience feedback

Continuing on from our roundup of customer survey feedback from Autumn 2007, Spring 2008 and Autumn 2008 we are happy to present the last of the comments from our email customer surveys. This time it's the turn of our two Christmas shows, The Goblin WHo Saved Christmas and Hansel & Gretel.

Northern Stage: The Goblin Who Saved Christmas
Northern Stage: Hansel & Gretel

With Kneehigh Theatre's Don John opening our Spring programme in Stage 1 this week, we're preparing for another season of shows and another season asking for your feedback. If you do receive one of our surveys, please take the time to complete it - we hope these posts have shown that what you say really matters to us, and that we're not afraid of criticism.

As ever, feel free to leave any additional comments you have by clicking on the link below.

Don John rehearsal blog pt 5

With the kind permission of Kneehigh Theatre, we're reproducing Carl Grose's rehearsal blog. This is the final part of five. Don John is on at Northern Stage from the 27 - 31 January.



Week Five

So here we are. The last official week of rehearsal. And I’m secretly obsessing about trying to get across that my character Alan is a milkman.

I’ve been in this room too long.

Perhaps we all have.

After the end of this week, we’ll move into the Courtyard Theatre for tech, previews and the madness of press night. But until then, we still have a few precious days in our lovely, windowless hall to run the show through as many times as we can.

Throughout rehearsals we’ve plotted, plodded and pranced our way through the story bit by bit, exploring scenes as stand-alone moments. Now comes the really exciting part when you stick it all together to see how (or if!) it floats! And it seems to float rather well. When I say this, I mean we got through it, which is no mean feat when piecing a show together. However, I could find no moment to convey I was a milkman, and time is running out.

We have an added bonus of having the sublime Mr Tristan Sturrock here with us (stay in your seats, ladies!). Tris is, of course, fresh from Kneehigh’s West End hit Brief Encounter, and was Tristan in Tristan & Yseult. He’s worked with the company for years, and was one of those Kneehigh performers I watched as a kid that made theatre seem truly magic. He’s to take over as Don John for a few weeks in the spring whilst Gisli takes his own show, Metamorphosis, out to foreign climes.

Tris is here to watch a run-through and get a taste of the show in preparation for rehearsals in January but, as is the Kneehigh way, it’s suggested he have a go at being Don John in another run we do. He plays it brilliantly considering he hasn’t a clue what’s going on. There’s something delightful in having the dark and dirty Don John look at you with a far-away haunted look, and then say: “What happens now?” Us actors mutter surreal instructions to him mid-scene like, “Now take my knickers off.” Or: “Now you punch this bin bag three times then break my ankle.” Or: “Now we have sex on the wedding cake.” Tris nods. “Oh, right.” He’s happy to oblige.

Come the end of the week, the space is tidied, costumes packed up, props are piled high. There’s a sad stack of strange items that came with us from the first week at the Barns that never found their way into the show. There, amongst the detritus, I see a rusty holder with six empty milk bottles. I experience an epiphany - the overall narrative structure of Don John won’t really be bettered by the fact that I am (or I’m not) a milkman.

The bottles wilt like a half-dozen X-Factor rejects as they realise they won’t be playing the RSC’s Courtyard Theatre this season.

Sorry fellas. I tried. But that’s show business.

Switch off the theatre

Northern Stage is changing the way it works to reflect our commitment to Energy Efficiency and our impact on the environment.

We believe that building a more energy efficient and carbon friendly world in 2009 will involve subtly changing the way we live and the things we do.

You may notice that some of our lights have blue stickers on them. This is because we believe they don’t need to be used in order to light our corridors or public areas. Turning off these lights helps to reduce our energy consumption. We have also adjusted our heating systems so that you should still feel comfortable in our auditoria whilst we continue to tackle heat-loss. Backstage we’re turning off our screens and photocopiers overnight, continuing a company-wide recycling scheme and reducing the carbon footprint of the building as much as possible.

We are constantly looking at the ways in which we programme the theatre and work with like-minded organisations, both locally and nationally, to ensure we are being as energy efficient as possible.

With greater pressures on the world, many of us will need to find new solutions to avoid meltdown by 2080. Northern Stage is committed to a more sustainable business model. We are exploring ways of using renewable energy – one of our ambitions is to use solar panels to contribute to our summer hot water requirements and air source heat pumps to make use of the heat extracted from our auditoria. We are also part of national initiatives to make our theatres greener and, in collaboration, we hope we can create a list of acceptable production materials and formalise our recycling processes.

We’re also limiting the emissions into the atmosphere in terms of the theatre’s transport, the way in which our staff travel and how our audiences might arrive, all of which contribute to our carbon footprint.

We’re looking differently at the way we live our lives and run our theatre.
We hope you will help us to achieve our aims.


“Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come – and you don’t even know it.”
Life and Fate
Vasily Grossman
translated by Robert Chandler

Don John rehearsal blog pt 4

With the kind permission of Kneehigh Theatre, we're reproducing Carl Grose's rehearsal blog. This is the fourth part of five. Don John is on at Northern Stage from the 27 - 31 January.

Week Four

Craig Johnson is an idiot.

There. I said it.

Actually, that’s not as harsh as it sounds. In fact, where I come from, this is perhaps the highest praise I can give him (and believe me, I’ve tried to give less). I don’t mean that Craig is a dunderhead or a pratt or a pranny or a brainless, gibbering nincompoop. No, no. I mean that he is an idiot in the finest, and most theatrical sense.

Right now, I’m sitting out front, watching him bust some moves in the rehearsal room. He plays Derek the vicar – a man who preaches to an empty church, and who cannot reach out and touch his poor wife, Anna. Anna (played by fantastic Icelandic actress Nina Dogg Filippusdottir) stands beside her father’s body and mourns. She has had a dark dalliance with our anti-hero Don John and demands her ineffectual husband act on her behalf. Craig hollers into the air, “Ohh! I’m going to do… something!” Craig then leaps into the air (sort of), and rolls clumsily across the floor. Action-movie style, he tries to crawl under a chair but gets his head caught. He then tries kicking the door open. It doesn’t budge. So he has to open it by hand, and then bolt out into the darkness to find his man. It’s heartbreaking, pathetic and hilarious all at the same time.

Being an idiot is what is partly required of us as performers in Kneehigh. It does not essentially mean being randomly stupid. It means allowing yourself to be foolish and naughty and free when rehearsing, in the hope that you might hit upon something truthful in the telling of the story – although, if honest, the stupidity does tend to infectiously take over. The director has to rein us in a little (scratch that – a lot). But when it hums, and this self-imposed playfulness is unbound, we sometimes reveal our most human flaws - ridiculousness is celebrated. That’s the idea, anyway.

I’ve gone all worthy. Enough of that! Want some more examples of sublime unrestrained foolishness at work?

Gisli Orn Gardarsson wears a floral dress and skips gaily about the room, singing a sickly sweet wooing song whilst trying to seduce Emily from Cscape. She’s not having any of it. Mike Shepherd’s character Nobby takes my character Alan out on an impromptu stag-do, ties me up, puts a pair of women’s pants on my head, rubber gloves on my feet and a funnel down the front of my trousers. Patrycja Kujawska plays Zerlina the Polish cleaner. She dances about a seedy hotel room with her vacuum whilst dusting and reading a book – it’s sassy and very funny. We’re practising the songs. Dom Lawton (singer extraordinaire) looks to me and says proudly, “I’m going to sing like an otter!” And by God, he does.

What a bunch of idiots.

Coronation Street star announced amongst the cast for Look Back in Anger

Northern Stage has announced casting for its own Spring production of John Osborne’s 1956 masterpiece Look Back in Anger, directed by Erica Whyman and designed by Soutra Gilmour.

Taking the lead role as Jimmy Porter is ex-Coronation Street star Bill Ward, who played bullying builder Charlie Stubbs. Charlie was known for his abusive relationship with pub landlady Shelley Unwin, and for eventually being killed off by Tracy Barlow, which earned Bill a 2007 British Soap Award for ‘Best Exit’. Most recently Bill has been entertaining Monty Python fans as the flamboyant and “Homicidally Brave” Sir Lancelot in the West End production of Spamalot. Due to Bill’s appearance in Coronation Street many people think he is from Manchester; however, he’s actually a born and bred Geordie from Gosforth. Bill makes his debut at Northern Stage as the original disillusioned, working-class ‘angry young man’.

Bill is joined on stage by Nia Gwynne as Alison, Jimmy’s long-suffering wife whose middle-class upbringing is one of Jimmy’s biggest loathings. Nia recently appeared in the New Vic’s revival of Dangerous Corner and Sherman Cymru’s The Almond and the Seahorse.

Alison’s best friend, Helena, a well-to-do actress who becomes a target of Jimmy’s uncontrollable outbursts, is played by Laura Howard. Laura is known to Midsomer Murders fans as Cully Barnaby, daughter of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby played by John Nettles. Laura has also worked extensively with English Touring Theatre, Donmar Warehouse and most recently appeared in the West End opposite Will Thorp in David Hare’s The Blue Room at The Haymarket, London.

Cliff is played by Welsh actor Rob Storr. Cliff is Jimmy’s only real friend who puts up with his rantings and tries to keep the peace in the house. Rob has previously worked with director Erica Whyman on Shadow of a Boy at the National Theatre and has also appeared at The Gate Theatre, London and with Welsh theatre company Slush Theatre.

Completing the cast of five as the Colonel, Alison’s father, is long-standing stage actor Robert East. Most recently seen in a national tour of Headlong’s cricket-themed comedy The English Game, Robert has previously worked at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company and extensively for Sheffield Crucible.

Rehearsals for Look Back in Anger begin on 26 January with the production opening at Northern Stage on 6 March prior to a six-week national tour.

Don John rehearsal blog pt 3

With the kind permission of Kneehigh Theatre, we're reproducing Carl Grose's rehearsal blog. This is the third part of five. Don John is on at Northern Stage from the 27 - 31 January.

Week Three

Monday. We arrive in Stratford. We get settled into our “digs” – theatre jargon for “the room you’re going to be living in for the next two months”. We, the company, go to toast our arrival at The Dirty Duck, which is a famous pub situated on the Waterside right between the Courtyard and The Swan theatres. It is exactly 13 seconds from my door. Perfect positioning! Everyone is revved-up. Another treat is that the fabulous Cornish dance company Cscape have joined us. They will be the chorus of females on Don John’s legendary list! It’s great to have them on board, and have the team grow so elegantly. En masse, and excited, much ale is quaffed. We make an exception (it is our first night in Stratford, after all), but promises are made that it won’t be like this every night… (ahem…)

Tuesday. Work begins in earnest in the RSC rehearsal space at the top of town. It couldn’t be more different from the Barn. It’s brightly lit, windowless, and huge. Emma exchanges running on the cliffs for extreme yoga. All new levels of pain are discovered. The Cscape girls’ presence also means that a number of dance sequences in the show have gone up a gear. It becomes apparent that this is going to be “a sweaty one” (actually, they always are, but so far, this one’s really sweaty!). Seeing as it is our first day of rehearsal, and acclimatising to the new space has been a little disorienting, we decide to unwind from the day by heading to The Dirty Duck for one or two. Or three.

Wednesday. We plough through the songs again, and familiarise ourselves with the start of the show. Emma now starts to layer in detail, and it gets exciting. At lunchtime we have a meet-and-greet with the RSC team. Everyone is really nice, and we feel very welcome. They asked us here before, with our version of Cymbeline. Guess they liked it! In the afternoon, we start to play around with Vicki Mortimer’s looming, rusty, but wily set. I don’t want to give much away, but we all get a taste of the “wow factor”. Everyone agrees it’s cool as ice. Everyone also agrees that tonight should be a night off from the pub as it’s Stu Barker’s birthday tomorrow. However, we still somehow end up at The Duck. It’s hard to resist when it’s only 13 seconds away from your door… and the extreme yoga is working wonders, so…

Thursday. Music maestro Stu Barker’s birthday. He gets a chocolate cake, a Flight Of The Concords DVD and a stylophone (picture a sort of shrieking calculator activated by a small wand). The man couldn’t be happier. He suggests the ever-so-slightly annoying instrument be in the show. Emma says absolutely not. We rehearse into the evening then go for an Indian meal. We decide to crown the evening with a quick drink in The (yeh, you guessed it) Duck…

Friday. My character, Alan, gets electrocuted attempting to fix a dodgy festoon for his wedding. We do the scene a number of times, and I end up pinballing off the set, dancing The Robot and almost dying from a heart-attack (told you it was “sweaty”). The scene has next-to-no narrative function. At the moment it’s way too long. It may get cut, but it was great fun to make it. I’ll let you know if it survives. Hey! Was that the end of Week Three already? Blimey! Look out! Here’s comes Week Four!

Quick!

Duck!

Autumn 2007 customer feedback

As promised before Christmas, we're continuing to publish all the feedback we've received via our email surveys on a show by show basis. This is the third and final part of the feedback we've collected, and is for the shows during Autumn 2007.

As before, you'll find below links to the complete set of customer feedback comments for each of the shows since September. They're in PDF format, as most people have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed.

Please take the time to read them, and use the comments section below to give us your thoughts. We've not edited them at all, except to remove customers names for purposes of anonymity.

Northern Stage: Our Friends in the North
People Show: People Show 118
ATC: The Brothers Size
Told by an Idiot: Casanova
Northern Stage: Tattercoats
Northern Stage: A Christmas Carol

Don John rehearsal blog pt 2

With the kind permission of Kneehigh Theatre, we're reproducing Carl Grose's rehearsal blog. This is the second part of five. Don John is on at Northern Stage from the 27 - 31 January.

Week Two

Mary Woodvine’s six month old baby, Morgan, watches us rehearse from the balcony. We’re pretending to be electrocuted, we’re being “erotic” with vacuum cleaners, we’re getting tied up in Christmas fairy lights and attempting to choreograph a dance whilst sitting on chairs. I wonder what must the boy thinks?

We’ve been charging our way through the first half of the story. Emma likes to work bold, broad and fast, to put a shape on things, refining the details later. Meeting the characters last week was great, but seeing them interact with each other is even better. We learn who they are, what they want for themselves, and from others. They come alive now. And it’s kinda thrilling to watch.

We’ve taken to calling Anna Maria Murphy the Word Witch. This may sound a bit cruel, but I’ve checked it out with her, and I think she likes it. Why Word Witch? Well, she often sits perched high above us on the darkened balcony, her face eerily lit up by her laptop glow. She watches the scenes, and at Emma’s behest writes new song lyrics or poetry, conjuring words as if by magic. She also wears a long black writing cloak, too. Get the picture? Word Witch! There’s also a conspiracy theory afoot that the Word Witch uses her powers to help her team win at volley-ball, cursing the other team, and stripping victory off them at the last moment.

Damn you, Word Witch!

Thursday ends with a rough showing of what we’ve done so far - a sketchbook as Emma calls it. It’s for the production team, and some friends from Battersea Arts Centre where we’ll be performing the show next year. It’s rough but it goes down well. Feels nice to perform already. But we shouldn’t get complacent. Maddy, a journalist from The Guardian, is also there. She’s writing a piece on the company and the new show. She watches us play ping-pong and get slightly over-excited at our production manager’s amazing card tricks. Like baby Morgan, I wonder what she thinks.

Sadly, this is our final week in Cornwall. On the last day, we take our last deep gulps of precious Cornish air on the cliff, and listen to the navy practice blowing things up off the coast. Ominous man-made thunder-claps coming from misty dots on the horizon. Next week we re-locate to the home of the bard, Stratford-Upon-Avon. We’re going to the RSC, where rehearsal will continue. And where the show will open. It’s all a bit exciting, really. Not for the first time this week, I wonder: What will they think?

And I can’t help but smile.

Don John rehearsal blog pt 1

With the kind permission of Kneehigh Theatre, we're reproducing Carl Grose's rehearsal blog. This is the first part of five. Don John is on at Northern Stage from the 27 - 31 January.

Week One

Rehearsing a Kneehigh show can be many things, but it is always surprising. My first surprise came on Day One when I arrived at The Barn in Gorran Haven eager to start work, only to be told I was not to play the title role of Don John (the world’s greatest lover) as I had initially presumed. The part, I discovered, had gone to an ugly Icelandic actor. With all the professionalism I could muster, I refrained from causing a scene (the poor Nord’s country is bankrupt – he needs all the work he can get!), and accepted the role of Alan (a character I couldn’t quite recall from Mozart’s opera). Our director, Emma Rice, seeing my fragile actor’s pride somewhat cracked, came close and soothed me with words of reassurance: “You’ll probably be wearing a mullet wig.” A mullet wig? There is hope for the production yet…

Actually, I’m just pulling your leg. I knew I was going to play Alan. But it is true that rehearsing a new Kneehigh show is full of surprises. And yes, I may get to wear a mullet wig. And yes, the Icelandic guy playing Don John is very ugly.*

So. What happened in the first week of rehearsals?

It’s all a bit of a blur but it went something like this:

We discussed the story of Don Giovanni or Don Juan or Casanova (or, as he is in this show, Don John). We dipped and skipped through Anna Maria Murphy’s gorgeous poetry. We had a close call with a herd of sinister, theatre-loving cows who might well have never been there at all! We got all nostalgic talking about Corona lemonade, The Clash and The Incredible Hulk (the show is set in Britain in 1978). We took each other’s weight, and found some balance on the cliff. We winced and strained to hit the right notes on Stu Barker’s fantastic harmonies (long way to go yet). We dressed up and met the characters of our story (in low light - with a 70s soundtrack). We lit a fire, set off some fireworks, and endured a seemingly never-ending Beatles medley. We picked our jaws off the floor after some pretty awesome Polish violin playing. We tussled with the minutiae of the rules of Volley-Ball. We (or rather, I) tried to survive a sweaty day long Tango lesson (still scarred from that one). We got to know each other, and sample the world we where about to enter for the next five months.

There’s lots to do. But as our director Emma says: “Every day, in every way…”

* He’s not really. He’s a seven foot tall, ex-gymnast with matinee idol looks. But I’ll cut him down to size over the course of the tour.

Spring Brochure is here

Our Spring/Summer 2009 brochure has finally arrived into the building, and will hopefully be landing on doorsteps across the region from Thursday.

In the meantime, you can book for any of the shows online, or download a PDF of the brochure to peruse on your computer.