June always brings with it so much excitement as we head towards our traditionally busier time of year, writes Christopher Elmer-Gorry.
Whether that’s as a director or a writer, the nature of working in the theatre industry, and specialising in making work with or for young people, is that the majority of the performances are at the end of the academic year. We’re launching into that period now!
In the last month I’ve had a show performed that was commissioned by the Almeida Theatre in London.
Warts and All Theatre have worked in association with Subika Anwar- Khan (a Northamptonshire artist) and presented her one woman play Divided at Camden People’s Theatre in London ahead of Northamptonshire performances in the Autumn.
I’ve been auditioning actors for a show that I made last summer for Almeida Theatre and is being revived this year for the Edinburgh Festival, which is called From The Ground Up.
We’ve also had ongoing rehearsals for our Scuff Night at Foodies.rocks, and rehearsals
for Hansel and Gretel and Little Criminals, our Young Actors performance projects at Delapre Abbey, on July 9, 10 and 11 and July 22 and 23 respectively . And we’re programming our July Sunday Artist Shindig, on July 2, where Lebedek will perform. It’s been busy!
for Hansel and Gretel and Little Criminals, our Young Actors performance projects at Delapre Abbey, on July 9, 10 and 11 and July 22 and 23 respectively . And we’re programming our July Sunday Artist Shindig, on July 2, where Lebedek will perform. It’s been busy!But now it’s time for focus on the craft of that work- I enjoy this period because it’s about bringing life to the ideas that you’ve been working on for so long.
Our next project In Northampton is our Scuff Night at Foodies.rocks onJuly 1, which is presented by Warts and All Theatre’s The Collective, a theatre group for adults who want to develop their craft in theatre making. Alongside the performers, we have been working with four Northamptonshire writers who have developed ideas for one-act plays.
The group functions as a collective, which means it’s important that there is an element of reflection within our process. So we are holding our first ever ‘Scuff Night’ on Sunday 1st July at Foodies.rocks in Northampton. This will be an interactive event where our audience will experience extracts of these four plays. The audience then decide which two plays the company will develop next year into fully realised productions. This is a really exciting project for us:It’s about taking your own ego as an artist out of the equation.
It’s about giving the ideas back to the community to see what interests them.
It’s about creating new plays by Northamptonshire writers in collaboration with Northamptonshire audiences, and fundamentally it’s about sharing the process of making work – demystifying the world of theatre! We want to encourage that dialogue. A dialogue where people have a voice in the work that is presented.
It’s about giving the ideas back to the community to see what interests them.
It’s about creating new plays by Northamptonshire writers in collaboration with Northamptonshire audiences, and fundamentally it’s about sharing the process of making work – demystifying the world of theatre! We want to encourage that dialogue. A dialogue where people have a voice in the work that is presented.
Hopefully you will be able to join us at the Scuff Night on the evening of July 1, and help steer the work you think we should be creating.
