Sinead Matthews in Bed Trick, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins

Joe Hill-Gibbins, director of our sold-out hit productions of The Changeling, has written and directed a new short film inspired by the play.  Watch it now and read more from Joe in The Guardian about his experience.

Check out our other short films, coproduced with The Guardian, here.

Plus see behind the scenes photos on Facebook!

Bed Trick is sponsored by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg supports digital innovation at the Young Vic.

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.

 Colman Domingo (above left) and Forrest McClendon (above right), stars of the original Broadway production, join the UK premiere of The Scottsboro Boys, directed by five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman. Colman played Private Harold Green in Steven Spielberg’s multi-award winning epic Lincoln, and reprises his Tony Award nominated role of Mr Bones, alongside fellow Tony nominee Forrest McClendon who plays Mr Tambo.

They join Olivier Award-winning actor Julian Glover as The Interlocutor. Julian’s extensive work on stage includes the lead in The Voysey Inheritance at the National Theatre and in King Lear (Shakespeare’s Globe); Richard II (Old Vic); Galileo’s Daughter (Bath/Peter Hall Company); Phedre and Britannicus (Almeida); The Dresser and Oliver! in the West End. Julian’s myriad screen credits include some of the most iconic films of the 1980s including Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the James Bond classic For Your Eyes Only. More recently TV audiences will have seen him playing Grand Maester Pycelle in HBO’s international hit Game of Thrones.

Dawn Hope’s work in the theatre includes Porgy and Bess and Piaf in the West End, as well as Rupert Gould’s Rough Crossing (Headlong/Lyric Hammersmith and UK tour) and the role of Billie Holiday in Lady Day (New Players/UK tour) . On television she is well-known to Coronation Street viewers for playing the character Alison Soames.

The cast also includes:  Adebayo Bolaji (Clarence Norris) who was in the original cast of Ghost in the West End, Buddy on tour and Little Shop of Horrors (Birmingham Rep). Rohan Pinnock-Hamilton (Olen Montgomery) performed in the world tour of Riverdance; Hairspray in the West End; Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Mary Poppins on UK tour. Carl Spencer (Andy Wright) has most recently been performing with Rizzle Kicks on their UK tour. We’re also excited to welcome Christian Dante-White (Charles Weems) and Clinton Roane (Roy Wright) , who were also in the original cast of The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway. 

Further casting will be announced in the coming months.

The Scottsboro Boys opens on 18 October for 5 weeks only – get your tickets today!

A glimpse of the space for SEN festival last year

This year’s SEN festival is titled: The Strongest Person in the World is the One Who Stands Alone and is a response to our production of Public Enemy, the tale of one man’s brave struggle in order to do the right thing and speak the truth against corruption.

Three local SEN schools have been working with three exciting theatre companies to create individual responses to Public Enemy. The students will come together to share a story that travels through time, underwater and around their own imaginations. Guided by the practitioners, this is their exploration of what it means to be part of a group or to stand alone.

Presented by the Young Vic in association with Look Left Look Right, Milk Presents and Tangled Feet.

Find out more about all our work in Taking Part here.

That very night I went straight home, came up with a proper narrative, scripted it, compiled a soundtrack, choreographed the blocking, borrowed costume from wardrobes around my house and drew pictures of all the lighting states and specials. I was ready to prove her and all the others wrong. And we did. We all achieved grades B and above (thank God for external examiners). But in all honesty I didn’t care about getting a B grade or about school in general because I had plans to pursue a career as a singer-stroke-rapper-stroke-celebrity chef (Don’t ask!).

4 years later (and much to my surprise) I am starting the BA Hons Directing course at Rose Bruford College. A further 3 years on and I am graduating and starting a work placement at the Young Vic which Annie Castledine had helped me to organise. Another 2 years and 4 projects on I’m the Boris Karloff Trainee Assistant Director on Public Enemy.

This is the largest production that I have been a part of and one of the biggest learning opportunities I’ve ever had in my professional life. The revelations are happening every day; with pennies dropping by the hour. My confidence is building and the need to trial the latest model of ‘Roy The Director’ is becoming more and more intense. I’m greatly anticipating the lessons of the tech next week and witnessing the growth of the production in previews. I’ve also been invited to assist on workshops with Laura Farnworth as part of her Jerwood award, giving further insight into other ways that the Young Vic engage with the wider community through theatre. It’s increasingly difficult in this time to get into the rehearsal room of great directors without a certain level of experience or a strong recommendation. Not everybody can take the risks that were being taken before when hiring assistants but Young Vic has given me a great credit which gives my CV a boost but more importantly the opportunity to learn from a great master.

This process has really helped me to recognise my growth as a director and as a person. I hope that in a few years I can blog about directing a production of this scale on the Young Vic’s main stage. Perhaps my old drama teacher will come along and be pleasantly surprised.

Roy Weise is Boris Karloff Trainee Assistant Director on Public Enemy, now playing at the Young Vic.  Learn more and book tickets at youngvic.org.

Niall Ashdown

Have you worked on Ibsen before?
No.

What is your favourite play (seen, read or worked on)?
Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

What is your favourite midnight snack?
Low quality chocolate – probably stuff I was saving for my children.

What is your favourite word?
Flail – it’s just an L-plate away from ‘fail’.

What are you most passionate about?
Football, birdwatching, family. If only I could combine all three.

If days were 28 hours long, what would you do with the 4 extra hours?
Sleep.

If you could be in a room full of any one thing, what would it be?
Music

Favourite holiday you’ve ever been on?
Argentina/Chile

Dogs or cats?
Neither. I keep walking the contents of one through my house, and chasing the other away from the birds in my garden.

If you could have any one supernatural power, which would you choose and why?
Flying.

Niall Ashdown plays Aslaksen in Ibsen’s Public Enemy, which starts at the Young Vic from 4 May. 

He returns to the Young Vic, following his performance in Annie Get Your Gun.
Other theatre includes: Comedy Store Players (Comedy Store); Impropera (Kings Place); Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Bolton Octagon); Lifegame (improbable); Hungarian Bird Festival (UK tour).
Television includes: Whose Line Is It Anyway, Outnumbered, Parents, Angel Cake.
Radio includes: The Long Count, Occupied, Losers, Hungarian Birdsong, Tunnel Vision, The Treatment.

What is your favourite midnight snack?
I’m asleep long before then.

What is your favourite word?
Sunshine

What are you most passionate about?
My grandchildren.

If days were 28 hours long, what would you do for the extra 4 hours?
Hope for sunshine and sit in it, playing music and reading.

If you could be in a room full of any one thing, what would it be?
Good red wine.

Favourite city – why?
New York. It’s like being in a Batman film and a Woody Allen film at the same time.

What is your favourite song?
A Soft Place to Fall, Allison Moorer.

If you could have been born in any era, which would it be and why?
I feel fine about the era I was born into!

If you could have any supernatural power, which would you choose?
The power to put this government into the shoes of the people it’s hurting. (I think that answers the ‘why’ as well.)

David Sibley plays Morten Kiil in Ibsen’s Public Enemy, which begins 4 May at the Young Vic.

Previous Young Vic credits: Sweet Nothings, Uncle Vanya, Cruel and Tender.

Theatre includes: Dallas Sweetman (Paines Plough/Canterbury cathedral); Space Project (RSC/Davidson US); Naked (Almeida); Dirty Wonderland (Frantic Assembly); Edward Bond’s Lear (Sheffield Crucible).

Film includes: Mr Nice, Closed.

Television includes: Broadchurch, Utopia, Mrs Biggs, New Tricks, Wallander.

Book tickets for Public Enemy

What is your favourite play (seen, read, or worked on)?
Seen – Shining City at the Royal Court. Read – The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh.

What is your favourite midnight snack?
Chicken from Chick ‘n’ Ribs, Tooting

What is your favourite word?
SNACK!

What are you most passionate about?
Friends and family.

If days were 28 hours long, what would you do for the extra 4 hours?
Procrastinate.

Favourite holiday?
Mooched about Cornwall with Sarah and ate nice food.

Favourite city – why?
London. Home. Or Edinburgh because it smells excellent.

What is your favourite song?
Changes frequently. Currently Drops in the River by Fleet Foxes. (Listen here!)

If you could have been born in any era, which would it be and why?
Jurassic. Just to see.

If you could have any supernatural power, which would you choose?
Willpower.  Then I’d go to the gym more often.

Adam Best plays Horster in Ibsen’s Public Enemy, which begins 4 May at the Young Vic.

Theatre credits include: Woman in Black (West End); Our Country’s Good, Journey’s End (Original Theatre Company); The Golden Dragon (ATC); Pieces of Vincent (Arcola); Northern Star (Finborough); By the Bog of Cats (Wyndhams).

Film and television includes: Holby City, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness, The
Bill, The Catherine Tate Show, Blooded, CupCake.

Book tickets for Public Enemy

Richard Jones in rehearsal for The Good Soul of Szechuan with Jane Horrocks and John Marquez

I’ve known the director Richard Jones for more than twenty years.  I didn’t see his very early shows such as Too Clever by Half at the Old Vic which are now legendary, and now much imitated – though I have seen so many pictures of it that it has entered my dreams.  I saw the production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme that he directed at the National Theatre in the 1980s.  I remember it for many reasons (the grandiosity of the design, the deliberately grotesque performances) but mostly, in retrospect, because it expressed with such clarity Richard’s aversion to what he sees as the worst kind of theatre, described by him in an unforgettable phrase : ‘a classy snooze’.

Richard’s theatre wakes you up – like the most intense moments of your life do.  It’s a kind of crystalline mash-up.  There on stage is the play, fully explored, fully experienced, loved up and delighted.  And yet there’s something else as well – a sort of infectious mania for truth-telling.   Somehow through all the elegant clowning and the intensely disciplined choreography, there’s a voice insisting gently: this really is what it is like to be alive.

His production of The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev for the English National Opera at the Coliseum was a masterpiece of supreme courage and confidence by a very young director.  It was wacky, thrilling, funny, overblown, delightful in every way – and you believed that this was exactly as the composer (and as Gozzi, the writer of the play on which it is based) intended.

All of Richard’s work is a celebration of the horror and ridiculousness of being alive.  How can it be that we live in this ludicrous way?  But what fun, at times, and, at times, how bleak and ghastly.   His Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Royal Opera House, like his more recent Tritico on the same stage, was so powerfully imagined, with such obsessive interest in the minute detail of social and psychological exchange, with such extravagantly bold staging ideas that you’re partly (inwardly) shouting ‘Enough! Enough!’ and ‘More! More!’ at the same time.

He has directed a show for me at the Young Vic once every two years: Six Characters Looking for an Author, Hobson’s Choice, Annie Get Your Gun, The Good Soul of Szechuan and Government Inspector.  Each has been the highlight of its season, a magical mystery tour not into a world of fantasy but into a world more comically, tragically and painfully real than real life could ever be.   It has been one of the great pleasures of my professional life to have the opportunity, time after time, to sit down with Richard and ask: ‘Where in the world shall we go next?’

David Lan
Artistic Director
Young Vic

Richard Jones’ production of Ibsen’s Public Enemy opens 4 May at the Young Vic – learn more and book tickets here.

Time is flying and we are now well past half way in our rehearsals for Public Enemy. Richard is perhaps one of my most inspiring directors and before going into this process one of my key questions was to how Richard generated the distinctive and original worlds of his productions – and also to understand a little more about how his imagination works.

The first two weeks were an opportunity for the actors to be very explorative with their characters and scenes. Richard was very clear that this was the actors’ time to feel free to experiment and follow any instincts. Much of Richard’s work is done with the actors on their feet, and very little is sat around a table. Richard runs scenes from start to finish, rather than stopping and starting, and he will whisper in my ear any notes for the actors which he then gives after they have had a go at running the scene. Working with Richard in this way, it really is incredible witnessing the speed of his ‘director brain’ and his ability to spot and diagnose moments. Richard’s notes will come in quick succession and it’s a job in itself for me to keep up! To be so close up to Richard’s imagination is quite something. His notes span the psychological to the visual, noting blocking, thoughts, nuances, and always placing each moment in a context for the actor. Rather than being concept or style led, Richard mines and mines the characters and text. We learn how these characters relate to eachother and Richard consistently pushes their portrayal to be as real as possible, closer to how humans interact and behave in real life. Richard’s notes shift characterisations away from being ‘stagey’ to something that is alive and unexpected. He has an eye that can uncover the opportunity in even the smallest moment that would otherwise be overlooked.

So what I am learning I think is that to create the original worlds that I see in Richard’s work, far from being concept or style led, as perhaps I first anticipated, Richard focuses on making the characters and their journeys accurate and plausible. He drills into each moment to find a truth. From this foundation a rich, complex world with its own rules begins to grow. But Richard is a director of many parts and this is what makes his work exciting.  He has a tremendous facility to work visually – he has a keen design and spatial instinct and its very clear what he wants in the staging. Moving into the latter stage of rehearsals Richard is now clearing ‘making’ and crafting his production. I also feel that we are now moving into a more expressionistic phase of the process, where Richard’s imagination is starting to be transferred to the stage. We now move on from the experimentation of the first few weeks and the characters that have now been created are gradually sculpted by Richard into something that specific and at times choreographed. I am really excited to see how Richard brings all the components of his process together in the last few weeks, and hopefully then I may be able to reflect further on how Richard creates his extraordinary worlds.

Laura Farnworth is Assistant Director on Public Enemy.