Share your story with #Culture365

At the Young Vic, we think theatre can transform our everyday world into something sublime.  It makes us think, laugh, cry, and fall in love.  Essentially, we think theatre can change your life. But we want to hear what you think.  How has theatre made an impact on your world?  We’re looking for 365 stories of how theatre has made a difference in people’s lives – so share your story in the comments section below, send it to us (with a photo if you like) to culture365@youngvic.org or tweet using the hashtag #Culture365.  We’ll gather together your stories to tell the big story of how culture changes people’s lives across the UK every single day.

One Billion Rising

A clip from the One Billion Rising dance video

On Thursday 14 February at 1pm, we are taking part in One Billion Rising.

One Billion Rising is a global day of action to stop violence against women and girls. It’s a flashmob dance event and something everyone can get involved in..

One Billion Rising is:

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

And you can be involved in this amazing event! To take part in the flashdance, you can learn the routine by watching this video or come along along 14 February for 1pm at the Young Vic to see it in action.

See the One Billion Rising website for full details of the event and other locations.

Feast trailer sneak peek

Last week we shot the trailer for Feast with Dusthouse and the amazing company! We can’t wait to share with you… watch this space!

Learn more about the show at youngvic.org/whats-on/feast.

Meet the cast of Feast

The world premiere of Feast will feature an incredible company of actors, dancers and musicians.  Learn more about the show here.

Naana Agyei-Ampadu
Naana was born in Accra, Ghana and moved to the UK at the age of 5. After graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama, Naana was cast in Caroline, Or Change at the National Theatre. Naana has also appeared in Avenue Q in the West End, Che Walker’s The Frontline at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Been So Long at the Young Vic and Edinburgh Festival.

Sola Akingbola
Sola is one of the UK’s leading percussionists. Self-taught and with over 24 years of experience, he describes his percussive style as ‘a synthesis of the subtle grooves of Yoruba drumming with a progressive and experimental sonic twist.’  Whilst being one of the longest-standing members of the platinum-selling band Jamiroquai since 1997, Sola has also played for a long list of celebrated musicians around the world including: David Bowie, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Will Young, Art Blakey, Aswad, Gregory Isaacs, Damon Albarn, Newton Faulkner, Axelle Red, Lokua Kanza, Ayo, Larkin Poe, Fatoumata Diawara, Francis Lalane and Gasper Lawal.

Michelle Asante
Michelle graduated from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre work includes: Dot in OZ (Unicorn Theatre), Rockets (National Theatre of Scotland Workshop development, Tron Theatre) and The Peacekeeper (National Theatre of Scotland Workshop development, Wildbird) and college performances including The Liars, Six Characters In Search Of An Author, Love’s Labours Lost, The Misanthrope, Scenes From An Execution and Tom Jones.

Daniel Cerqueira
Daniel Cerqueira’s many credits at the Young Vic include The Changeling, Vernon God Little, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Sleeping Beauty and Afore Night Come. His other theatre work includes Arabian Nights (RSC) and Blood Wedding (Almeida). On screen he appeared in the Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan and popular television series including I’m Alan Partridge (BBC) and Rome (HBO). You might have seen him recently in the feature film of The Woman in Black and the television adaptation of Birdsong.

Laurence Corns
Laurence Corns studied Ethnomusicology at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. He specialises in swing jazz from the 1930′s and music from Zimbabwe.

His jazz credits include working for many years with French/American based ‘Lost and Wandering Blues and Jazz Band’ through whom he met and toured with jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux. In London he performs regularly with the leading musicians on the swing scene Adrian Cox, James Evans, TJ Johnson and New Orleans pianist Dom Pipkin.

In the field of Zimbabwean Mbira music he has spent many years as side man to Mbira maestro Chartwell Dutiro, toured Europe with Stella Chiweshe and has played with The Bhundu Boys.

From 2010 Laurence was musical director on the National Theatre production of the Broadway musical FELA! which went on to be performed at The Carre Theatre Amsterdam and Sadlers Wells theatre London.

Noma Dumezweni
Noma is a Laurence Olivier Award-winning actress known for her work with the RSC. Her theatre work includePresident of an Empty Room and The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other at the National Theatre, London; Breakfast with Mugabe, Antony and Cleopatra and Much Ado About Nothing for the RSC; A Raisin in the Sun for the Young Vic at the Lyric Hammersmith, London (for which she won her Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Master and Margarita, Nathan the Wise and The Coffee House at Chichester Festival Theatre, 6 Characters Searching for an Author at the Gielgud Theatre and The Bogus Woman at the Traverse and the Bush.

Yanet Fuentes
Yanet  graduated with honours as a qualified teacher from the world famous National School of Contemporary and Folkloric Dance in Havana, Cuba.

A dancer at La Maison Casa de la Moda in Havana, she is a three-time winner (2001, 2002, 2004) in the professional couples category at the Tropicana World Salsa Championships, held in London. Yanet was the lead dancer and principle performer in the West End musical Lady Salsa.  You might recognise her from her work in videos/on tour with Shakira, Rihanna and Alicia Keys, or from the series So You Think You Can Dance.

Michael Henry
Michael Henry is a London-born multi-genre composer, vocalist, musical director and clarinettist.
He was recently the vocal director, vocal arranger and cast member of Death and the King’s Horseman (National Theatre, 2009),  vocal director on FELA! (National Theatre, 2010) and vocal director and cast member of Emperor and Galilean (National Theatre, 2011).
As a composer, his work includes: Stand for 16 acapella voices (BBC PROMS 2006), Rocket Symphony (co-composition with Orlando Gough) for 500 voices and fireworks (part of the opening ceremony for Linz as European Capital of Culture 2009), Circus Tricks (an opera with liberetto by Adey Grummet, composed for Tete A Tete 2012). 

Michael has worked as a live backing vocalist for artists such as George Michael, Chaka Khan, The Pet Shop Boys, Barry Manilow, Jamelia and Will Young. In the studio, his vocal work for artists include Michael Ball, Robbie Williams, Billy Bragg, Chrissy Hynde and Diana Ross. Michael was the baritone soloist in Scott Walker’s Drifting and Tilting at the Barbican 2008. He is presently a full time member of a capella pop group Flying Pickets and vocal ensemble The Shout.

Michael was the vocal animateur for 250 children aged 6-13 for the Horrible Histories BBC PROM 2012.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Kobna is a Ghanaian-born, British actor who has appeared on stage, screen, and television, including Sorry, I’ve Got No Head, Little Britain, and Sirens. A graduate of the Guildford School of Acting, he won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. He is well known for his work at the Young Vic including recent productions The Changeling and Joe Turner’s Come And Gone.  Kobna was recently seen at the National Theatre in Antigone.

Louis Mahoney
Louis is a Gambian-born British actor.

Born in The Gambia, Mahoney originally studied to be a doctor but abandoned ambitions for a medical career to become a drama school student in the 1970s. He is a long-standing campaigner for racial equality within the acting profession.

He has been seen most frequently on television in series such as: Danger Man, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, The Troubleshooters, Menace, Special Branch, Doctor Who (in the stories Frontier in Space, Planet of Evil and “Blink”), Quiller, Fawlty Towers (as Dr Finn in “The Germans”, 1975), The Professionals, Miss Marple, Yes, Prime Minister, Bergerac, The Bill, Casualty, Holby City and Sea of Souls.

Ira Mandela Siobhan

Ira is an actor and dancer best know for his work with DV8 Physical Theatre. Over the last few years he has toured with DV8 in both Can We Talk About This? and To Be Straight With You. You may have seen him at the National Theatre in FELA!. His other theatre and dance work includes The Lifeguard with The National Theatre of Scotland, Punchdrunk, Richard Alston Dance Company and Macbeth at The National Theatre Studios.  He recently worked with Akram Khan as his assistant movement director on the upcoming film Desert Dancer.

Coral Messam
Coral is a performer, movement director and holistic movement practitioner who has completed studies in dance and drama at the northern school of contemporary dance, actor centre and central school of speech and drama. Throughout her career she has worked in theatres, T.V, schools, and performing arts establishments such as Talawa theatre, Irie dance theatre, Abby Arts and Union dance. Her performance credits includes Lion King, Kylie Minogue, The National theatre, DV8 Physical theatre, Courtyard theatre, and the Royal Exchange. Coral’s choreography work began as a dance assistant and performer for Death and the Kings Horseman at the National theatre. She then went on to choreograph for the Almeida theatre for Ruined at the Tricycle theatre.

Alexander Varona
Alexander has won many international awards as a dancer and choreographer including the 2007 Critics Circle Dance Award. He was originally principal dancer, singer and choreographer for 12 years with the National Folkloric Company of Cuba, appeared as The Moor opposite Carlos Acosta in his acclaimed “Tocororo” which played repeatedly at the London Colisseum and Sadler’s Wells and from 2005-2009 was a member of the Russell Maliphant Contemporary Dance Company performing the duet “Push” and the solo “Flux” which was choreographed for him.

Varona choreographed the critically acclaimed music and dance spectacular “Lady Salsa” which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival 2000 and went on to run in London’s West End and also toured internationally. He has also worked as dancer, choreographer and singer with different companies such as the Challot Theatre, Paris and Cuba’s famous “Tropicana” cabaret show in Monaco and in January 2005 he was commissioned to create and perform his own solo “Timelapse” at the opening night of the Graz International Dance Festival, Austria. In the same year he also wrote, directed and performed “Boleros de Nuestras Vidas” at the National Theatre, Havana to rave reviews.

Feast premieres 25 January, 2013 at the Young Vic.  Book now to see this incredible company on stage!

Schools’ Theatre Festival

We’re into the fourth of the Schools’ Theatre Festival this week: over 80 young people from four schools in Lambeth and Southwark are working with a professional creative team developing These Moments, a collection of micro-plays which will be shaped into an epic mosaic. Natalie and Stewart, our great director/writer team, have delivered three weeks of research and development in the schools, taking the students on journeys through their lives as story-scavengers, looking for excitement in the familiar, strangeness in the everyday, new things in the old.

The students are beginning to discover a new world containing a mysterious stranger who watches from afar, the politics of friends, dark secrets behind closed doors, and unexpected encounters with celebrities on on the Old Kent Road. This week they will start to move this world onto paper, developing characters, conversations and finding their ‘moments’.

It’s a huge project for the young people, most who are just 13 years old, to get their heads around. One girl asked last week ‘when are we getting the script?’, only to be reminded that they’re in the process of writing it! There is also huge diversity amongst the company in culture, personal experience, language and interests and it will be a real challenge to make sure that each student’s experience is woven into the final piece. Every week Stewart and Natalie bring the student’s workbooks back to the Young Vic and uncover gems that have been written or drawn by a young person who hadn’t spoken much in the session, which they type up for possible inclusion in the final script.

To learn more about our Taking Part department or to get involved, visit http://www.youngvic.org/taking-part.

Petition to stop the prosecution of David Cecil

David Cecil in a court cell in Kampala. Photograph: Isaac Kasamani/AFP/Getty Images

We call on the government of Uganda to stop the prosecution of David Cecil and to uphold the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

We write to express our concern over the prosecution of British theatre producer David Cecil by the Ugandan Media Council for producing the play ‘The River and the Mountain’. The play, which was staged in the Ugandan capital Kampala, chronicles the killing of a gay businessman by his staff. It has been highly praised for the tragicomic way it attempts to tackle widespread homophobia in Uganda where leading politicians wish to introduce the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and gay rights activists such as David Kato have been murdered or beaten with impunity. In this climate, free speech is severely restricted. Uganda’s National Theatre rejected the play and the Media Council instructed Cecil not to stage it until state censors had gone through it. Bravely, he went ahead. He now faces 2 years if convicted for ignoring their orders. We call on the government of Uganda to stop the prosecution of David Cecil and to uphold the fundamental right to freedom of expression.

Yours,

David Lan, Artistic Director, Young Vic

Guest blog post: Director Jeff James in Munich

Directors Kate Hewitt, Tarek Iskander, Jeff James, Rikki Henry and Joe Hill-Gibbins in front of the Residenz Theater’s Marstall Studio.

At the beginning of July, I was part of a group of Young Vic directors who travelled to Munich as guests of the Goethe Institut and the Residenz Theater. Although it is Germany’s third largest city, Munich has two world-class theatres: the Residenz Theater and the Munich Kammerspiele. We saw work at both theatres, including a festival of work by young directors at the Marstall, the Residenz’s studio theatre. It was a week of extraordinarily high quality theatre: again and again the level of the acting was breathtaking. The formal inventiveness of the work was provocative and inspirational.

What was striking about several productions was that they had found a really interesting formal device, but then used in a way that was sufficiently sophisticated to reinvent its meaning several times. A show in the Marstallplan festival was an adaptation of Kathrin Röggla’s novel We Don’t Sleep, about the financial sector, directed by Gregor Turecek. From the beginning of the show, a tennis ball machine is firing balls at the wall. Soon there are five or six machines firing in different directions. The machines do not stand for one thing, instead shifting in meaning: they show the mechanisms the traders think they can control, but which evade control; the speed and pace of the work; the male violence shown towards female colleagues. The design closely shaped how the actors could move, and created a situation rather than illustrating a location.

Another stand out show was Calixto Bieito’s Cherry Orchard, designed by Rebecca Ringst at the Residenz. At the start, Yepikhodov clumsily knocks down a cloth printed with the façade of a house: behind there is a plasterboard shell of a house, with three walls and beams over the top. Over the course of the show this shell is destroyed. The panels of the floor are jumped through, the beams slam down into the wall. When Lopahkin has got the estate it is destroyed and worthless – his victory is hollow. There was an extraordinary moment at the end of Act 3 when Lopakhin tries to rape Ranevskaya, which seemed wholly true to their relationship at that point.

What is really impressive is the way that European directors can so often have their cake and eat it, in that they set up extraordinarily bold formal devices and at the same time establish relationships and situations that are resoundingly truthful. This was most vividly shown in a production of Hedda Gabler by the Toneelgroep Amsterdam, touring to the Kammerspiele and directed by Ivo van Hove. There was a scene where Hedda licked Brack’s shoe, while also continuing a very nuanced and subtly-played conversation with him.

Although European theatre has less of a new-writing culture, there is lots of adaptation of non-dramatic texts.  We saw an adaptation of Max Frisch’s Questions, which just consists of questions about life (eg: “Are you sure you are really interested in the preservation of the human race once you and all the people you know are no longer alive? State briefly why.”). This production was directed by Alexander Riemenschneider. The play began with a figure at the piano, and then four superhero characters burst in, smashing though plasterboard panels or climbing down a wire ladder. They did forward rolls and jumps, but their bodies were not in fact super human. They asked the questions to each other and to the audience, but the gag was that they had no answer. These were people who were putting themselves in a position of authority by asking the questions, but they couldn’t deal with life. They would try to make coffee, smoke a cigarette or kiss and would fail in awkward clumsiness. The joke is that these people find life easier than everyone else, as they are superheroes, but that even for them life is impossible. The play between the tragic and the comic was very sophisticated here.

These were the highlights in a week of exceptional theatre. It is extraordinary how powerful theatre can be, even when one doesn’t understand the language the actors are speaking. Bereft of a text, the centrality of form becomes more obvious. These plays offered an incitement to push form much further.

- Jeff James, July 2012

Jeff James’ credits as director include: One for the Road and Victoria Station (Young Vic and Print Room), Swan Song (Print Room) and 24 Hour Plays (The Old Vic). Credits as assistant director include: Uncle Vanya (Chichester Minerva), The Changeling (Young Vic), Measure for Measure Workshop (RSC), Fabrication (Print Room), Macbeth (Shakespeare’s Globe), Public Property (Trafalgar Studio 2), Dial M for Murder (WYP and UK tour). 

5 stars and an extension week for A Doll’s House

UPDATED with our Sunday reviews!

Hurrah! Due to popular demand, A Doll’s House has been extended until 4 August. And we’ve had some cracking reviews in so far – here is a quick selection.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“If you ever see a production of the play, see this one… Hattie Morahan’s Nora is a once-in-a-lifetime performance.’’
The Sunday Telegraph

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“An intense emotional thriller…Ian MacNeil’s set is like a spinning doll’s house come to life…Hattie Morahan’s Nora offers a piercing study in desperation.”
Sunday Express

★ ★ ★ ★
“Ferociously raw and palpably radical…Hattie Morahan is instantly enthralling.”
Independent on Sunday

★ ★ ★ ★ “A sexy, passionate interpretation of Ibsen, potent and emotionally truthful.”
Evening Standard – full review here

★ ★ ★ ★
“Hattie Morahan gives an award-winning performance [in] Carrie Cracknell’s impressive revival…Simon Stephens’s new version feels fresh with welcome flashes of humour”
Mail on Sunday

★ ★ ★ ★
Daily Mail

★ ★ ★ ★
“A riveting production of Ibsen’s classic led by a vivid, moving performance from Hattie Morahan.”
Financial Times – full review here

★ ★ ★ ★
“There is so much to admire in this marvellous production…terrific.”
The Times

★ ★ ★ ★
“Hattie Morahan is wonderfully luminous…Ian McNeil’s set is exquisite…warmly recommended.” Daily Telegraph – full review here

★ ★ ★ ★
“Morahan is exquisitely urgent, simultaneously maddening and beguiling”
The Arts Desk – read full review here

New artwork on the front of our building

If you’ve visited the Young Vic, you will probably have seen the Clem Crosby’s artwork on the front of the building called 180 Monochrome Paintings (affectionately known by cabbies as ‘The Cheese Grater’).

Here it is at night time lit up!

Well, seven of the panels from the front of the Young Vic have been shipped to Venice! They are on loan for a Haworth Tompkins / Young Vic installation for the Venice Biennale.

The exhibition in Venice focuses on The Cut and is a large installation containing the Young Vic facade panels, lightbox images, talking heads interviews in a soundscape – to create a fragment of life on The Cut.

In the mean time, however we’ve got a lovely temporary artwork to replace them by the visual artist Jake Tilson, which is a photograph of a wall of ‘The Corderie’ in Venice, where the artworks will be on display with a slogan saying ‘ON LOAN TO THE VENICE BIENNALE’.

#40Facts – Fact #28

Did you know why The Clare is called The Clare?

We have two studio spaces – The Clare and The Maria. Here’s the story of the Clare…

The Clare was named after the director and producer Clare Venables. Clare was an inspirational presence in the theatre. One of the first women to run a theatre, she became the artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible in 1981 and was well-known for her work and encouragement for young directors. Some of which included Michael Boyd (artistic director of the RSC, until this year) and Stephen Daldry (award-winning film and theatre director).

Clare’s pioneering work and campaigning for young directors and designers won her the very first Young Vic Award – an award created for talented theatre people but in particular those who also go out of their way to help other, younger people become who they want to be.

As well as this award, our studio space, which has recently been home to Mad About the Boy, Going Dark, One for the Road/Victoria Station and Disco Pigs, was named in Clare Venables’ honour.