Theatre Club

There are many things I am going to miss about my job while I am on maternity leave. Part of the problem is I don’t just see it as a job. It is a series of projects with wonderful, warm, diverse people that have a direct impact of my life and the way I think. Having a baby seems to be just another one. Except it won’t culminate in an evaluation. I suspect there will be just as much tea and cake, though.

One of the projects I will miss the most is Theatre Club. It’s my other baby. The project I feel the most emotionally connected to and completely inspired by. The idea for Theatre Club came to me last September when I was chatting to one of my Two Boroughs members who had come to see Three Sisters. She only ever applies for one ticket, and comes and leaves alone. She has a great time and she enjoys her time here, but it struck me that I take the opportunity to discuss and argue and rage for granted. I work in a theatre. A lot of my friends are theatre makers. My colleagues go to see the plays I go to see, and there is a whole community around me built around a shared, collective experience. Simply, I always have someone to talk to.

In my work here I am continuously trying to identify, and break down, barriers to participation in the arts. Many are obvious:  lack of money, feeling you are the wrong age, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong gender, simply a lack of invitation. A lack of language – not of basic understanding of English, but theatrical and artistic literacy, is not something we regularly, or readily, address in participation. How do you discuss what you have seen if you do not have the words? Or anyone to use those words with? So I started Theatre Club. The premise is simple. It is run along much the same lines as a book club – you read a book in your own time at your own speed, you don’t close it and start a discussion. So Theatre Club is held after all of my tickets have been used, on a different evening. The invite is to anyone who has come and seen the show on a Two Boroughs free ticket. The event is also free, of course. It needed to feel welcoming – my role is basically host – so I give away wine, juice, and nibbles (at Christmas there were a lot of mince pies…).

And there is a someone to lead the discussions. One of the most important tenets of the group is that no one involved in the artistic process of the show under discussion is allowed in. No one who represents the Young Vic (apart from me) is allowed in. The director is persona non grata. It needs to be a space where people are comfortable giving their opinion without fear of offence or judgment. So I needed an outsider, not just to be a neutral voice, but a guiding one, who would help us to articulate our thoughts and feelings. I approached Maddy Costa for this role on the basis of her work with theatre makers, in particular Chris Goode and his Transform project at West Yorkshire Playhouse. She seemed to have an openness in her writing and engagement that suggested she would be ideal for my group. She was, and she has been the discussion leader ever since, even starting Theatre Club (albeit with audience members who have paid for their tickets) at the Battersea Arts centre recently. My baby is growing up.

What has amazed me the most is the response we have had from Two Boroughs members. This started as an idea I wasn’t sure anyone else would be interested in, and has grown into hundreds of people who want to join in our evenings. Before we even began I had emails and letters: ‘This is something I’ve ALWAYS wanted so – HOORAY.’ After we were up and running I had more: ‘You’re dead right about how much fun the discussion group was.  Everyone has an opinion; theatre buffs or not.  I didn’t have much to say myself but it’s nice to hear other peoples thoughts on a show.’ And during the evenings themselves people asked why we were holding them, what we had to gain. I asked them what they thought about this question. The responses amazed me again: ‘I didn’t have anyone to discuss it with so this is really nice,’ ‘I came to find out what I missed,’ ‘…not to be laughed at, a nice kind environment to have an opinion in,’ ‘I came to see if I am the only person to have these opinions,’ ‘It’s a gift to the people of Lambeth and Southwark to talk about art.’

I don’t see it as a gift to them. It is a gift to us here in the theatre – to see how much and in what way people are engaged and enlivened by an opportunity to be seen and heard. It’s going to be a tricky project to miss but I am leaving it in capable hands. I just can’t wait to be back.

Lily Einhorn, Two Boroughs Project Manager

A Taking Part knees-up!

Drumtastic

We like a good knees-up in Taking Part. Who doesn’t? So what better way to celebrate the end of a project than with a party! The Taking Part department have spent the last four months working on a Parallel production to run alongside the main house production of Feast. Where Feast took as its inspiration Yoruba and the diaspora of Nigerian people, we inverted the idea, looking at our cast of local Lambeth and Southwark people and asking how we all ended up in the area.  Essentially – who are we are where have we come from? The outcome was a beautiful salad bowl of people, all mixed up in the same two boroughs, different but together. The resulting show, Flashes, was devised and written from the weird, wild and wonderful stories that the participants brought to the room. Threads were woven together in a giant tapestry of movement, colour and story as we were treated to a show in which young people and elder people and everyone in between from a diversity of backgrounds acted together on stage.

And so to our knees up. To celebrate the show, to celebrate our local community, to welcome our friends and neighbours to the theatre, we threw open our doors on a Sunday, got in stall holders and Nigerian food, made some drinks, and booked some bands. The fantastic Cosmic Child played as we ate, drank and talked, and then Drumtastic put on a foot-stomping show on the set of Flashes. As the band played and people jumped up to dance and clap, we looked around us, at the people of different ages, from different community groups, all listening and laughing together. They are our community, and we love ‘em!

Lily Einhorn is our Two Boroughs Projects Managers.

Flashes

Feast Party!

Is the tail end of winter getting you down?  Are you in need of some warming food, a cocktail or two and the chance to kick off the post-Christmas blues? How about tapping your feet to some great music? Watching thrilling performances? Making some new friends and celebrating with old ones? Join the Taking Part team and our community cast to celebrate a dazzling project  on Sunday the 24^th February. Come together for our Feast Party – an afternoon of feasting and celebration which will draw influence from Yoruban culture across Nigeria, Cuba, Brazil, the UK and the USA.

We’ll be getting a little taste of Yoruba with slices of the parallel production of Feast, delicious Nigerian food, fantastic drumming and dancing, and stalls selling art, crafts and jewellery.

So whether it’s a glass of fruit punch, some jollof rice or some bata drumming you’re looking for – come, enjoy, Feast!

Feast Party, Sunday 24^th February 2013, 3pm – 7pm

Please RSVP or contact us for further information:

dimitynicholls@youngvic.org
Tel: 020 7922 2859

Two Endless Moments

Two Endless Moments – The Young Vic School’s Theatre Festival

We are excited to announce that our writer Stewart Melton has finished the script from the wealth of material gathered from the young people and it goes into rehearsal in the four schools on Wednesday.  Jo Scotcher has designed a beautiful set of waves of wood – sneak preview below!

The wonderful world of Taking Part

Laura Barmes is a Drama Applied Theatre and Education placement student from Central School of Speech and Drama.  She is undertaking a 3 month placement with our Taking Part department – here’s what she had to say!

 

 

 

The fact that ‘reality’ is fast approaching is quite the hot topic among 3^rd year university students. We seem to speak of it as if it is some sort of ulterior realm-a world where life as we know it will come to an end and any sort of fun or holidays will be handed in, in exchange for long hours and a packet load of responsibilities.

Some of us get the opportunity to get a ‘taster session’ of this fast approaching reality by doing a placement term. I was extremely lucky to be placed in the Taking Part department at The Young Vic. I can safely say, after eight weeks of being there, that the Taking Part office is a wonderful world indeed. It is filled daily with 5 enthusiastic staff members who are clearly extremely dedicated to what they do. In my time there, I have had the opportunity to see first hand, by going into schools and assisting with workshops, the impact of some of their projects.

There is always a lovely atmosphere in the office. People discuss their individual projects, advice is given and taken happily and freely, making it a great place to share ideas and to collaborate on work. There is something very special about getting a first hand view of passionate people considering an idea, discussing it, sharing it and then using their resources to put it into practice and make it happen. I have felt very privileged to have been part of that process over the past 8 weeks. Time was always devoted to ensuring that I had interesting work to do as well as clear instructions.

Although I realize that this is a pretty special place, and that not all offices are equipped with such a happy atmosphere and smiles, I feel that they have provided me with some good skills to embrace the transition from university to the real world, that is so close now.

That ‘reality’ hot topic is a little less daunting now.

To learn more about Taking Part, please visit www.youngvic.org/taking-part.

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.

Feast parallel production auditions

Auditions for the Feast parallel production at the Young Vic took place last weekend and almost 150 turned up to take part. Amelia Sears, our esteemed director, led groups of young people and adults in a task-based process which saw them producing short improvised scenes using sounds, movement and the odd umbrella. Imagination and bravery were not in short supply and we were treated to tribal dancing and a Cockney knees up, several boat journeys, a multitude of tube carriages, and one birth. (Thankfully, it seemed both short and pain free!).

With participants ranging from 14 to 70, covering the diversity of ethnicities and backgrounds to be found in Lambeth and Southwark, the groups were as different as they were energetic, as serious as they were joyful. In fact, joy was the over-riding feeling in the busy rehearsal room, as heart-wrenching stories of escape and rejection turned into solace and acceptance. It was an absolute privilege to see the briefest sliver of everyone’s lives, creating the uneven jigsaw puzzle of London that we now have the task of re-arranging in rehearsals. We really were blown away by all of the people who auditioned for us, but sadly we could not take them all. Our final cast, now painfully whittled down to 24, are all superb and our first evening sessions are this week. We can’t wait to get started.

To learn more about our Taking Part department’s parallel productions, click here.

Audition for The Suit Parallel Production

Are you aged 15-22?
Would you like to perform in a professionally produced show at the Young Vic?

BE A PART OF IT!
The Suit Parallel Production

Auditions: Saturday 24th March

Rehearsal Dates: Monday 2nd April- Thurs 7th June

Performances: Fri 8th & Saturday 9th June

The production will give you the opportunity to:

• Work with a professional director and design team.
• Have a taste of how professional actors work.
• Perform in a production at the Young Vic to an invited audience.

What we are looking for:

• Creative young people who want to expand their understanding and knowledge of the theatre.
• Fun, committed and enthusiastic young people who enjoy performing

To apply or find out more, please  email sharonkanolik@youngvic.org

Please note that the project is only open to young people who either live or study in Lambeth or Southwark!

We are looking for young people age 15—22 to audition for The Suit, a contemporary play with music, directed by professional theatre director Suba Das.

No acting experience is necessary and the auditions will be informal drama workshops that you don’t need to prepare for!

A Parallel Production at the Young Vic

Be a part of Wild Swans

Do you want to perform in an epic production at the Young Vic?

We are looking for people of Chinese and East Asian heritage to be part of the community chorus that will join our professional cast each night in our 2012 production of Wild Swans.

You do not need any experience of performing – you just need to be enthusiastic, 18 years or over and absolutely committed to the rehearsal and performance schedule. Friendly and fun workshop auditions take place on 5 & 6 January 2012. Rehearsals will then take place in January and March/April and performances will take place from 13 April – 13 May.

To find out more about Wild Swans and to book your audition place, call the Young Vic on 020 7922 2845 or email wildswans@youngvic.org.

We hope to see you at the auditions!

Hamlet Resource Pack: Ten Facts About Hamlet

Hamlet Resource Pack: Ten Facts About Hamlet

Welcome to the Resource Pack for Hamlet which runs at the Young Vic Theatre from 28 October 2011 to 21 January 2012. Resource packs are created for the majority of Young Vic shows, to provide an insight into the plays we produce and how we produce them. Please check back for interviews with the cast and creative team.

The Hamlet resource pack has been written by Lootie Johansen-Bibby.

Enjoy!
Taking Part Department

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TEN FACTS ABOUT HAMLET

1.  Hamlet is the most widely performed play in the world.  It is estimated that it is being performed somewhere every single minute of every day.

2. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play and uncut would take between 4 and 5 hours to perform. Hamlet has 1530 lines, the most of any character in Shakespeare.

3. One of the earliest re-mounts of Hamlet was on board a ship called The Dragon, anchored of the coast of Sierra Leone in 1607.

4. It is believed that Shakespeare appeared in the play as the Ghost at the Globe.

5. In the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of Hamlet in 2009, David Tennant used a real skull as a prop in the gravedigger scene. The skull had belonged to the composer André Tchaikowsky who bequeathed it to the RSC when he died in 1982 ‘for use in theatrical performance’. David Tennant was the first actor to use the skull on stage in a performance.

6. The first actor to play Hamlet was Richard Burbage, the lead actor in Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men.

7. The castle in which the play is set really exists. It is called Kronborg castle and was built in the Danish port of Helsingør in 1420s by the Danish king, Eric of Pomerania.

8. At the end of every play performed at the Globe, four dancers, two dressed as women, would perform an upbeat, bawdy song and dance routine called a jig – even if the play was a tragedy like Hamlet.

9. Where now we say ‘I’m going to see a play’ in Elizabethan times, people talked about ‘going to hear a play’.

10. Shakespeare advertises his own work in the play.  When Polonius interrupts the players and proclaims that he enacted Julius Caesar and was ‘accounted a good actor’ in Act 3 scene 2, he is reminding the audience that he will soon be starring in Shakespeare’s production of Julius Caesar.