Second open dance audition

Dance alongside some of the best street and hip-hop dancers in the world in Boy Blue's professional production at Northern Stage starring Kenrick 'H2O' Sandy.

Pied Piper, dubbed a hip-hop dance revolution fuses hip-hop and break dance to tell the famous story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Now, there is an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for successful auditionees to play the children of Hamelin alongside professional dancers on stage in front of a paying audience.

If you can tell your bugaloo from your krumping and are aged between 10-16 (but could get away with looking 8-12) why not try out? You don’t need to be an expert – Boy Blue can teach you everything you need to know. And there’s no need to prepare anything, just turn up!

To take part you will need to be available for rehearsal on the following dates this April:
Sat 4
Sun 5
Tue 14 (Easter Holidays)
Wed 15 (Easter Holidays)
Thur 16 (Easter Holidays)
Sat 25
Sun 26
Mon 27 (After school)

You will also need to be available for performances from Tuesday 28 April to and including Saturday 2nd May, including a dress rehearsal and a Saturday matinee. It is important that you are 100% committed to the rehearsal and performance schedule.

The Audition will take place at Northern Stage on Saturday 4 April from 9-11am. For more information, contact Jo Cundall by email; jcundall@northernstage.co.uk or by phone on 0191 242 7217.

Getting to northern stage has changed – remember to leave plenty of time to find a parking space!

Racine's Life and Times

A Pre-show discussion
Thu 2 April 6pm

Professor Jan Clarke, Head of French at Durham University, in conversation with Erica Whyman

Did you know Racine wrote Andromaque for his lover, acress Mlle Du Parc, and was later suspected to have poisoned her?

Why did Racine abandon the stage at the height of his fame?

These are just some of the questions that will be posed in this fascinating pre-show discussion exploring Racine's life and times.

Suitable for students and public alike. FREE with a ticket to Andromaque. No booking required.

First in 3 line-up: April 9th

Our wonderful participation team are proud to announce the line-up for April's First in Three, featuring contributions from Louise Dearden, Twisted Folks, Awkward City, Rob Walton, Zoe Lambert and The Ramshackle Ensemble.

If you've not made it to one of these nights before, they're a great chance to see snatches of new work by up-and-coming local theatre makers - anyone can put forward an idea they'd like to try out. Tickets are only £3.50 and you'll usually find most of the Northern Stage team there on the night, so it's an opportunity to chat to us as well.

There's more details on the First in Three page.

Dance audition for Pied Piper

Dance alongside some of the best street and hip-hop dancers in the world in Boy Blue's professional production at Northern Stage starring Kenrick 'H2O' Sandy.

Pied Piper, dubbed a hip-hop dance revolution fuses hip-hop and break dance to tell the famous story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Now, there is an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for successful auditionees to play the children of Hamelin alongside professional dancers on stage in front of a paying audience.

If you can tell your bugaloo from your krumping and are aged between 10-16 (but could get away with looking 8-12) why not try out?

To take part you will need to be available for rehearsal on the following dates this April:
Sat 4
Sun 5
Tue 14 (Easter Holidays)
Wed 15 (Easter Holidays)
Thur 16 (Easter Holidays)
Sat 25
Sun 26
Mon 27 (After school)

You will also need to be available for performances from Tuesday 28 April to and including Saturday 2nd May, including a dress rehearsal and a Saturday matinee. It is important that you are 100% committed to the rehearsal and performance schedule.

The Audition will take place at Northern Stage on Saturday 28 March at 2 - 6pm. To attend you must register by contacting Jo Cundall by email; jcundall@northernstage.co.uk or by phone on 0191 242 7217.

Good Luck!

The Beautiful Journey

A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
WILDWORKS 'THE BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY' NORTH EAST WORKSHOP
April 5th – 10th 2009

Something extraordinary has happened…

WILDWORKS is an acclaimed international company of artists, musicians and theatre makers who create large-scale theatre events in unusual sites working with the communities who live there.

‘THE BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY' a promenade performance sited in a working dockyards, featuring stunning visual imagery, water, film, food, fire, ice and music – where audiences will become part of a mass exodus and find themselves transported to a world of futures… the edge of tomorrow.

WILDWORKS believe that by working with local makers, performers and musicians is a vital part of the process of making their stunning landscape theatre.

Bill Mitchell, ex artistic director of Kneehigh Theatre, and his team of visionary theatre makers, invite you to join them.

During the workshop WILDWORKS will pass on our collective experience of making our particular style of outdoor work. This is a unique chance to get to know, each other and find out what's at the heart of our work.

The workshop will give time and space for individuals to explore their own creativity outside the usual boxes of performer, maker, musician etc. You will make installations, play with character, create sculpture, and invent sounds music and narrative in the landscape.

The workshop will take place from April 5th - 10th 2009 in Wallsend, Tyne & Wear.

This amazing opportunity is open to anyone over 18 years who would like to have a creative experience.

To be accepted for the workshop we also need to know about your availability during the preparation and performance of THE BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY North East (July 2009) - in case you are selected to join the team. Please note that you don't have to be available 24 hours a day during that period! - we can work with a certain amount of flexibility during rehearsals although places are more likely to go to those who can commit for the whole of rehearsal and performance.

If you are over 18 years are a performer or a maker, musician or none of those but would like to have an amazing creative experience then please apply by sending a application letter telling us about your skills, any previous experience and the reasons why you would like to take part, along with your age and contact details.

Email: info@wildworks.biz

Post:
WILDWORKS

reference N.E WORKSHOP

c/o The Works,
Crusader House, 

Newham Quay,

Truro, Cornwall

TR1 2DP

Application deadline Friday 20th March

The Beautiful Journey forms part of North East England’s world-class programme of festivals and events developed by culture10 and is funded by One North East, Northern Rock Foundation, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Arts Council England.

Look Back in Anger production shots

"Whyman's production is distinguished by the all-round excellence of the performances." The Guardian

"Despite this play being about an angry young man, it really does show a wonderfully complex female friendship between Alison and Helena. It’s a great story of struggle and redemption." Evening Chronicle

Look Back in Anger is on at Northern Stage until Sat 20 March, before heading out on a national tour.

Look Back in Anger: Rehearsal Diary pt 3

Oliver Baird, the assistant director on Look Back in Anger has been keeping a diary during rehearsals for the show. This is the final part of three. Look Back in Anger opens on Fri 6 March.

From LBIA Rehearsals

In the second week, the fight director Paul Benzing comes in to plan the various pushes, slaps, and wrestlings that punctuate the play, so the actors can safely build them into the ongoing rehearsals. One scene involves Jimmy (Bill Ward) pushing Cliff (Rob Storr) into an ironing board, causing the the board to topple over and the iron to fly off, burning Alison’s (Nia Gwynne) arm in the process. Paul is careful, precise, and patient, and in breaking each sequence down move by move quickly put the actors at ease. This is crucial when later he has to persuade Laura Howard, playing Helena, that it’s quite okay to slap Bill in the face, provided she does it as he has taught her. Laura, however, is too kind-hearted to find this easy, and Paul simply stands there encouraging her to slap him over and over again until she loses some of her reserve. By week four, however, the slap is looking pretty mean indeed.

Erica also asked Gary Kitchen, from the Newcastle-based improvisation group The Suggestibles, to come in one afternoon, and take the actors (and Erica and myself) through a number of improvising exercises. This was mainly to open up the possibilities for the Flanagan-and-Allen style number that Jimmy and Cliff perform to and with Helena in Act 3, given Gary’s experience of improvising musical numbers. The exercises were brilliant at changing the energy in the room, showing us how to stop thinking and just do or say things, and most importantly how to be acutely aware of what everyone around you is doing. It was hard work, but very amusing, and somehow we ended with an improvised story involving a bird in a jar talking to Brad Pitt. The imagination is a strange and worrying thing.

As rehearsals progress, consistent staging starts to emerge, and the actors experiment with - at first - the rehearsal costumes, which finds Rob Storr taking a particular delight in a mustard-yellow woolen cardigan, and then later, some of the actual costumes themselves. The men are all sent off to the barber’s for their 1950s haircuts, which are thankfully not as extreme as I imagined they might be - but then I haven’t seen them with the addition of Brylcreem yet.

As the broad brushstrokes of the scenes emerge, Erica starts to focus the actors on more and more detail, to find the right changes in thought, the right variations in tone, and the right objectives and motivations. The play, through its astonishingly rich language, is constantly shifting as the characters change their minds, listen, and speak, and the challenge for all the actors is to accurately reflect that. Questions constantly arise that affect this - does Jimmy actively try to seduce Helena? If so, when does he start? What are Colonel Redfern’s feelings about Jimmy? To what extent does Cliff stand up to Jimmy? Erica keeps asking those questions, and asking the actors to try out different motivations, so that the characters’ very human complexities and uncertainties become clear.

More than anything we are discovering that the play is really a tragedy, albeit a very modern one in terms of the tragic flaw, and that in rehearsals we have had to deal with its grand scale and small lives at the same time. In the last week of rehearsals, as we run scenes, acts, and the whole play over and over, we are finding that the detailed work has been paying off. And as we move from the rehearsal room to the theatre, and Charles Balfour continues his work on the lighting design, and construction put the finishing touches to the set, it is exciting to anticipate the first preview performance, what that shot of adrenaline will do, and to think that an audience is finally going to see what we have watched unfold in a bare and occasionally freezing rehearsal room for five weeks.

Devoted & Disgruntled - North East

Do you love theatre?
Do you find it frustrating?
Do you wish it were different?
Do you feel like an outsider in your own profession?
Have you just started out and need support?
Are you looking for a theatrical community outside London?
Is your sector always left out of the discussions?
Have you been in the profession for years and feel jaded?
Are you looking to change things?

DEVOTED AND DISGRUNTLED NORTH EAST:
What are we going to do about theatre?

Dear Friend

Four years ago I sent Improbable’s first invitation to Devoted and Disgruntled, an event that grew out of my passions and frustrations with theatre, about how I love theatre but still felt frustrated with how it happened sometimes.

Out of that first event an amazing number of initiatives have quietly and forcefully blossomed. Some of them are obvious, others, equally important, are more subtle and tangential. Just as important as all the initiatives and projects to have come out of D&D is the way in which, over the last 4 years, we have been slowly building a genuine sense of community.

One of the issues that has been raised at successive D&Ds is that there is a real need for this kind of event outside London so I’m particularly delighted that, as a direct result of discussions at D&D, The Empty Space have invited us to bring Devoted and Disgruntled to the North East, providing an opportunity for the theatre and performing community here to gather in Open Space and work on what could be improved; the things about which you are passionate and the things you wish were different.

So if there are things you are passionate about or things you are pissed off about, projects or proposals you need support on, or if you just want to connect with your peers, all are possible because in Open Space you set the agenda.

On past experience of D&D, the more diverse our group, the more creative and exciting the work has been. Anyone that is passionate about theatre and prepared to take responsibility for making it the best it can be is invited.

If you feel like this event might not be for you then that is a sure sign we need your input! If you feel that the issues that affect you or your sector never get discussed so what’s the point of turning up? This is the event for you!

Please join us on this journey.

Phelim McDermott
Co-Artistic Director, Improbable

Natalie Querol & Caroline Routh
Co-Directors, The Empty Space

find out more

Look Back in Anger: Rehearsal Diary pt 2

Oliver Baird, the assistant director on Look Back in Anger has been keeping a diary during rehearsals for the show. This is the second part of three. Look Back in Anger opens on Fri 6 March.

From LBIA Rehearsals

The rest of the first week consists of reading a section of the play and pulling it apart, piece by piece. As assistant director I have to look up references and quotations in the text that we don’t know, or research historical facts that have some bearing on the play - I find myself looking up everything from Lytton Strachey, TS Eliot, Max Miller, Flanagan and Allen, the Suez Crisis, the Archbishops of Canterbury, and 1950s newspapers, to the introduction into Britain of the teabag. Some of this information is playable, some not, but it all contributes to the evocation of an era. And of course understanding the language is paramount - especially with regard to Jimmy, whose use of language has a virtuoso quality. He speaks in long, tumbling sentences, often with high rhetoric, in what Osborne himself referred to as ‘arias’, and has a real ear for the cadences of different types of speech - the political, the religious, music-hall. This all has to be broken down and examined, so that it can be strung together with fluency and clarity - and simply learning that number of lines is no mean feat. In addition to the language and text work, the actors share their memories of their ‘most boring Sunday’, and each one conjures up vivid, and often highly amusing, childhood memories of Sundays that stretched on for hours, quiet, and painfully subdued. This helps us all understand the situation right at the start of the play - the idea of the everlasting, unbroken tedium that can envelop a Sunday - and the idle conversation, speculation, teasing, and needling that can result. The actors are not on their feet until Friday afternoon, and we make the tentative first steps towards staging.

Hannah Benoy, the deputy stage manager (DSM), is in charge of the rehearsal room, and together with Rachel Rowlinson, the assistant stage manager (ASM), has marked out the dimensions on of the stage in coloured tape on the rehearsal room floor. This gives the actors not only a sense of the size of the actual stage, but also the position of various useful architectural details, such as doors and windows. In addition, because this is a touring production, they have marked the width of the narrowest stage on tour. Part of my job is to see the production into each touring venue, and having an early indication of what moves/objects will be affected by moving from the wide stage at Northern Stage to smaller venues is incredibly useful. Hannah also notes down all the moves the actors make in a scene, making endless rough notes until - after many weeks - the final sequence settles. She is also ‘on the book’, meaning the actors can always turn to her with the traditional cry of ‘line!’ if they ever forget their words in rehearsal.

The stage is now marked out, but the furniture is not fixed. We are using a selection of rehearsal furniture, that gradually gets swapped for the real thing as an when they are found or made. Erica wants the position of furniture to be very flexible for the first few weeks, so that it doesn’t inhibit her own instincts or those of the actors, and indeed, chairs and tables swap positions frequently to see if it adds anything to the performance or stage picture. Soutra’s design has allowed for this flexibility, and one of the things that develops during rehearsals is the vocabulary of the stage - that is, what certain positions mean. What does it mean to be inside the square? Or outside? Or walking the line? Is the square the bedsit, or an arena, a hotspot in which the most violent antagonisms play out? Answers to these questions are through trial and error, and everyone contributes.