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This page lists a selection of past shows either by Riding Lights, Roughshod or showing at the Friargate Theatre. This list is updated as current shows reach the end of their run.
This information correct as of Fri 13 November, 2009
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November 1996: THE WINTER'S TALE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
A CROWN, A PALACE, AN ISLAND IN THE MED, a delightful wife and family - they sound like the stuff of paradise, the life of the man who has everything. But that man is Leontes, and this Sicilian paradise has a spider lurking in its claret...
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April 1997: A DIFFERENT DRUM
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
The framework for the play comes from the true story of the plague-stricken Derbyshire village of EYAM (pronounced "eem") in 1665, where, in order to prevent the spread of the plague beyond the boundaries of the village, the whole community agrees to seal itself off from the outside world and await its fate.
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October 1997: BET YOUR LIFE!
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Who knows what life will throw up next? A computer-enhanced projection of pecuniary possibilities? Or just a load of brightly coloured balls? How high are the stakes? What are the odds? What are you prepared to lay your life on the line for? Advertising, marketing, manifestos, the media: is modern life nothing but a cryptic fog in which our only guides are Mystic
Meg and Rikki Lake?
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October 1997: ROUGH DIAMONDS
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
We're all doing it. Scraping around, trying to find something that's worth something in life - a glittering reputation, shining success, perfect relationships, a brilliant career. But are we ever satisfied? Are the really valuable things buried somewhere deeper? Is there something concealed in the deepest bedrock - something precious, tough, imperishable - something to make it all worthwhile.
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December 1997: BARKING UP THE CHRISTMAS TREE
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
BARKING UP THE CHRISTMAS TREE the perfect recipe for a yappy Christmas.
Two Christmases... 1997 years apart. A traveller lost in time. An empty larder. A dog with stomach ache and a guilty expression. A family in chaos, and a father with a special plan for the 12 days of Christmas. Worlds away, another family crisis: a young couple, exhausted after a long journey, and in desperate need of a woof... er, roof. At the heart of it all, a baby whose father also has a plan. But what happens when things don't go according to plan? Holly and Sasha, dogged by their hairy companion, Alfonso, take an accidental journey which plunges them into the midst of a Christmas full of surprises - not all of them pleasant. Amid strangers, Holly and Sasha discover true chums and the bone bond of friendship. In a foreign land they dig up the real meaning of home. But how will they get back? Space walkies? Inter-galactic basket-blaster? And will Dad be completely barking up the christmas tree when they get there? Off with the leash and doggy-chocs away for the journey of a lifetime...
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December 1997: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE : the perfect start to a smashing Christmas. Is this the only life there can be, or are there parallel universes? In measuring the distances contained within the universe, is the speed of light (c) a constant (k) and what is that in terms of a sulky camel over 400 metres? If there are other universes, is it possible to enter them? And why is it only herbal tea-bags that have those little strings on them? Such questions have exercised the mind of man since time immemorial. Well, since 1BC, actually, when the mind in question was that of Tertullian 'The Teaspoon' Windsock. Unable to get a university grant, he and his cousin roam the ancient world (or, as he calls it, the modern world) in search of work. If it's paid, no questions asked. They find themselves helping out a beleaguered innkeeper in Bethlehem, arguing physics and metaphysics with King Caspar from Persia, dodging an omnivorous camel and outwitting crass and belligerent officialdom. And having a lot of fun... They finally discover the beginnings of a solution to their deepest questions in a day-old baby, who also shows them that some things keep best by being given away - a concept which is quite logical in a world where the square root of 4 is both 2 and minus 2.
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February 1998: THE FIRE RAISERS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
In a city terrorised by unknown arsonists, no one is beyond suspicion. Biedermann - big in hair tonic and a pillar of society - rails against the foolish townsfolk who are infiltrated by the mysterious fire raisers. So why does he let a homeless ex-wrestler talk his way into his home, eat his food and smoke his cigars? Who is the hefty orphan's uninvited companion, and what is the rumbling from the attic at night? And what does the Fire Brigade know that Biedermann doesn't want to hear? More to the point, what is Biedermann going to do about it? Swept along by the enigmatic pyromaniacs, he faces a burning dilemma. Will he rouse himself from his moral armchair or will he, quite literally, cook his own goose?
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December 1998: ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Bethlehem is feeling the strain... the inns are full to bursting, the census is stretching local bureaucrats to their limit, and the 7th legion of the Roman Army appears to be under the command of a sheep. But still the visitors keep arriving: a young couple in desperate need of a place to stay, an angel, a star... The only people prepared to help are Wayne and Mabel - two daft shepherds with single figure IQs, a flask of Granny's special brew and a talent for getting into trouble.
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December 1998: THE CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Down the stairs, along the corridors, through shadowy rooms, to just beyond the glowing fireplace where the Christmas Tree glints. A few small steps for a man, an epic journey for a tin soldier and a Christmas Tree Fairy. Desperate to find their identity in a cupboard that bleeps and winks and buzzes with plastic and micro-circuitry, the toys set off to find some answers. Why is that mysterious family back under the tree yet again? Why, after all these years, does nobody know who they are? And why hasn't anyone unwrapped the truth behind THE CHRISTMAS CONSPIRACY... until now...
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September 2000: FRIENDLY FIRE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
When the saints go marching in... What happens when our convictions - and our callings - clash irreconcilably with those of our neighbours? How do we know who is right? who ends up making the ultimate sacrifice?
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October 2000: AN ELEPHANT IN THE CORNER
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Ever been to one of those parties where there's one guest that no one seems to notice - one topic which no one wants to discuss - even when we're right under its nose? An Elephant in the Corner is a hilarious trunkful of sketches - moving and thought-provoking - based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the jumbo-sized imaginations of Riding Lights' team of writers.
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October 2000: GOOD GRIEF!
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Shock! Horror! Lives turned upside down in under three and a half minutes! Good Grief! is seriously funny - a heart-stopping, moving and thought-provoking collection of sketches based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the gobsmacking imaginations of Riding Lights' team of writers.
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November 2000: MELCHIOR'S MAGICAL MYSTERY QUEST
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Seventy abandoned guests... a chase across the desert... fabulous presents left in a cowshed... a camel who keeps getting the hump... What links these mysteries with an alien fire in the sky?
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November 2000: SHEPHERDS' DELIGHT
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
It's rotten being a shepherd. It pays peanuts. It rains. Roman soldiers shout condimenum mentae at your flocks. And now there are rumours about a mysterious masked marauder half-inching sheep from the hills around Bethlehem in the dead of night...
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January 2001: LOVE FIFTEEN
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Love Fifteen draws on the experience of teenagers, parents and national charity Parentalk – in fact all of us who have ever been brought up by parents, been parents, or tried bringing up tomorrow's parents – to create an exciting and explosive new piece of theatre. Active, reactive and interactive, Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company guarantees to hold your hand through a unique evening of laughter, tears, and all the ups and downs of some of the most keenly fought points of family life.
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May 2001: DICK TURPIN
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
From butcher’s boy to dandy highwayman, Dick Turpin always wanted you to call him a legend... and the moment he threw himself from the gallows, his legend became immortal. Ever since his last drop at York’s Knavesmire, Dick Turpin has been riding through the moonlit world of our mythology – glamorous, chivalrous, a big hit with the ladies. But... Riding Lights Theatre Company now rips the mask off one of York’s most notorious adopted sons... Dick Turpin is break-neck, eye-popping new piece of music theatre - an evening to keep you in breathless suspense until the final curtain.
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August 2001: ACTIVATE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
A week of medieval music and drama. Create your own music theatre piece working alongside Riding Lights Theatre Company and York Early Music Foundation. No specific skills are needed - just lots of commitment and enthusiasm. To book a place, contact York Leisure Office, 18 Back Swinegate, York, or ring the National Centre for Early Music on York (01904) 632220 for details.
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September 2001: LOVE FIFTEEN
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Being a parent, battling with parents, becoming a parent - it’s a funny old game, family. Just ask the Newboroughs… Mum’s fielding calls from the nation’s media about another rail disaster, and dad’s whole life revolves around his flash new car, his frankly embarrassing wrap-around shades and his so-last-century taste in music. Danny’s got a bag of sparkly beauty products in his wardrobe, and Sophie’s about to discover what her parents have been moaning on about for the past sixteen years. The ordinary life of another ordinary family, until tragedy strikes like a 100mph serve. But why, at match-point, do they suddenly find themselves playing on the same side of the net? * * * Love Fifteen serves up the wisdom and experience of teenagers and parents to create a highly entertaining, funny and explosive new piece of theatre. Active, reactive and interactive, Riding Lights Theatre Company guarantees to hold your hand through a unique evening of laughter, tears, and all the lobs and volleys of some of the most keenly fought points of family life. 'impressive… the sheer creativity was truly remarkable'
Steve Chalke (Chairman, Parentalk) 'a lot of fun… made me think about how I act towards my parents… anyone can relate to it'
GSCE Drama Student, York
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October 2001: REALITY STRIKES TWICE
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Life. Sometimes you're just too busy ducking and weaving to see the double-whammy it's about to throw at you? ? and when it strikes, will it leave you with a whole new perspective on life, the universe and everything, or punch-drunk and reeling with a halo of cartoon-canaries? Take a ringside seat to watch a weird and wonderful tag-team of characters slugging it out with reality: from the man who tries to sue God
to the thief who gets a flippin' marvellous birthday surprise. Reality Strikes Twice is stunningly funny ? a heart-stopping, thought-provoking and moving collection of sketches based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the gobsmacking imaginations of Riding Lights? team of writers.
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November 2001: ANGEL AT LARGE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
It's the ultimate mission for a trainee angel - top secret, highly dangerous and involving plenty of foreign travel. So imagine Auriel's surprise when he accepts this risky assignment to the Middle East and discovers that he's been asked to… … babysit. But what's so special about this particular baby? And why are so many people trying to get to him first? Two kings, each with very different plans; two crunchy-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside soldiers; and, of course, a map-eating camel with a taste for mischief… Amid all the chaos, armed only with his wits and one astonishing super-power, will Auriel succeed in his quest to look after the mysterious baby? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story in Angel at Large.
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November 2001: SHEPHERDS' DELIGHT
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
It’s rotten being a shepherd. It pays peanuts. It rains. Roman soldiers shout condimentum mentae at your flocks. And now there are rumours about a mysterious masked marauder half-inching sheep from the hills around Bethlehem in the dead of night… So when their pet lamb vanishes, Nokes and Purvis race into the crowded city to look for him. But, caught up in a whirlwind of criminal activity, mistaken identity and disturbing cuisine, will they find him? Will anyone in the Flock Inn get any dinner? What’s the big surprise awaiting our heroes in a cowshed? And will it be down to the dumb animals to save the day? Again. Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story. Shepherds’ Delight also features the long-awaited return of the black sheep of Riding Lights, the infamous Snowy...
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November 2001: THIS WAY UP
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
With the world spinning this quickly, it's a wonder we're not all too dizzy to tell which way is up. Or are we…? Join a head-spinning bunch of characters trying to find the point in this world… and the next… the man who travels by fish, the woman who picks up a disappearing hitch-hiker, and the thug who changes from house-breaker to pearly-gatecrasher
in one bewildering instant. This Way Up is straight-up funny – a heart-stopping, thought-provoking and moving collection of sketches based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the stratospheric imaginations of Riding Lights’ team of writers.
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February 2002: SCIENCE FRICTION
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
In a world where scientists are often accused of 'playing God', how can we combine the volatile elements of scientific discovery, faith and moral responsibility? From accusations of heresy levelled at sixteenth-century astronomers, through the ongoing creation versus evolution debate, to the explosive possibilities of human cloning, the Church and the world of science have often been deeply opposed, unable to speak a common language. Science Friction takes a dramatic, innovative look into this vast issue by turning the microscope on two extraordinary stories: Galileo's study of the heavens, condemned by the Church as diabolical arts in 1632; and a genetic research scientist who, today, finds her professional and personal lives clashing with devastating effects. Riding Lights intertwines these two stories in typically dynamic style. Gripping, entertaining, challenging, musical, Science Friction will tour nationwide until July. "style, decorum, comedy… plenty of dramatic tension"
The Stage
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March 2002: FIRST HAND
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
170AD. A high ranking Roman official returns to the Mediterranean port of his childhood to find old friendships threatened by new loyalties. He is caught up in the latest shockwaves of a story which started over a hundred years before and is far from over. His private and public worlds collide with devastating effect on those he loves the most. First Hand tells some of the inspirational but little-known stories of the early church, bringing to life the issues and struggles of the first three generations of a movement that reshaped the world - both then and now. The play challenges us to find our place in our own ancestry, to experience that vitality and energy for ourselves, and to decide whether or not we still measure up… A powerful piece of story-telling, First Hand is a characteristic Riding Lights mix of vigorous ensemble theatre, exotic music, comedy and emotional force.
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March 2002: TEN TIMES TABLE
A Production from York Settlement Players
A comedy about an inept group of villagers trying to organise a commemorative pageant about the "Massacre of the Pendon Twelve", a tenuous event from the seventeenth century. Left wing and right wing factions clash and it all goes horribly wrong... A welcome return by York's leading amateur theatre company, after their sell-out successes with JB Priestley's When We Are Married and Noel Coward's Relative Values.
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March 2002: TWISTED GENES
A Production from Riding Lights / City of York Performing Arts Service
the SCIENCE FRICTION EDUCATION PROJECT PERFORMANCES Science. It's not all Bunsen Burners and embarrassing safety goggles, you know... You are warmly invited to the Friargate lab, where students from three York schools will be stirring up an explosive mixture of science and theatre in four evenings of exciting new performances. Having observed and contributed to the devising process of Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company's new touring production, Science Friction, these A-Level and GCSE Drama students have devised short one-act performances on similar themes. Combining a huge range of elements, and asking big questions - What does the human body have in common with a galaxy? What would it be like if science stopped for a day? - these plays tell very human stories about very human people. Inventive, moving, funny, provocative - Twisted Genes promises to be an unmissable series of plays by York's young actors.
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March 2002: A PASSION PLAY FOR GOOD FRIDAY
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Riding Lights is delighted to be returning to York Minster on Good Friday this year to perform as part of the annual three-hour service. Episodes of the performance are scattered throughout the service, bringing to life the people, and the politics, the tragedies and the triumphs of Christ's passion. In the extraordinary setting of York Minster, Riding Lights presents a dynamic, moving and challenging piece of storytelling. Riding Lights has contributed to the Good Friday service at York Minster for many years, performing a huge variety of works including, in recent years, Dorothy L Sayers' King of Sorrows and Murray Watts' landmark adaptation of St John's Gospel.
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April 2002: IN
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
You won’t know them by their war-paint, but everywhere you look - from playground to boardroom, from skate-park to supper club - there’s a tribe... So why do we gang up? How do we decide who’s in and who’s out? And what does our choice of tribe say about who we think we are? Riding Lights Youth Theatre presents a dynamic ensemble play about the thrills and the chills of belonging. Devised by the Youth Theatre company under the direction of Riding Lights Education Officer, Suzi Fowler, and Sarah Dean, IN is a powerful and exciting experience. And you wouldn’t want to be one of the losers who misses it. Would you?
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July 2002: NOTHING BUT THE TROOTH
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
CAN YOU HANDLE THE TROOTH? Horace Winterbottom is a liar. Not just a common or garden little-white-liar, though - Horace's pathological untruths are the most imaginative, outrageous and, well... downright weird fibs you've ever heard.
So bad is Horace's condition that his parents seek professional help and discover a miracle cure: Troothpaste.
The results are amazing. Horace suddenly finds he's incapable of lying. But is the rest of the world ready to hear the trooth, the whole trooth
and nothing but the trooth…?
Ian Birkinshaw's hilarious comedy proves that trooth is sometimes scarier than fiction. A fast, furious fable, Nothing But The Trooth is a lot of fun... And you know we wouldn't lie to you about that…
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September 2002: IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth."
George Bernard Shaw Join a disparate (and pretty desperate) cast of characters in pursuit of happiness - and chasing it in the strangest of places… But happiness is the motorised bunny in the dog-track of life, and even if you do manage to get your teeth into it, is it actually what you thought you were chasing in the first place? If It Makes You Happy is a secret key to a small door in the Back of Beyond - a funny, challenging and moving collection of sketches based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the exuberant imaginations of Riding Lights’ team of writers. Come and see If It Makes YOU Happy…
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September 2002: TEMPTING FÊTE
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." - Mae West Welcome to your Fête. So many tempting treats on offer – so please feel free to help yourself… But will it be a Garden of Delights, or an endless row of frustrating sideshows? And what prize will you be taking home when it all comes to an end? A miracle? A life-changing encounter? A one-way trip to an unexpected destination and a stonking party at the end of the universe? Tempting Fête is deliciously funny – a heart-stopping, thought-provoking and moving collection of sketches based on stories from the Bible, from more recent history and from the alluring imaginations of Riding Lights’ team of writers. Tempting Fête - give in to it…
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October 2002: NATIONAL DOUBLE TOUR - FIRST HAND
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
170AD. A high ranking Roman official returns to the Mediterranean port of his childhood to find old friendships threatened by new loyalties. He is caught up in the latest shockwaves of a story which started over a hundred years before and is far from over. His private and public worlds collide with devastating effect on those he loves the most. First Hand tells the inspirational but little-known stories of the early church - the first three generations of a movement that reshaped the world for ever.
A powerful piece of story-telling, First Hand is a characteristic Riding Lights mix of dynamic ensemble theatre, exotic music, comedy and emotional force. Enjoy it, bring friends to it, debate it - and find yourself reflected in it - at First Hand. “storytelling with style, warmth and humour”
The Stage
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October 2002: NATIONAL DOUBLE TOUR - SCIENCE FRICTION
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
In a world where scientists are often accused of 'playing God', how can we combine the volatile elements of scientific discovery, faith and moral responsibility? From accusations of heresy levelled at sixteenth-century astronomers, through the ongoing creation versus evolution debate, to the explosive possibilities of human cloning, the worlds of faith and science have often been deeply opposed, unable to speak a common language. Science Friction takes a dramatic, innovative look into this vast issue by turning a lens on two extraordinary stories: Galileo's study of the heavens, which stretches the world's faith to breaking-point; and a genetic research scientist who, today, finds her professional and personal convictions clashing with life-changing effects. Riding Lights intertwines these two stories in typically dynamic style. Gripping, entertaining, challenging, Science Friction asks, From the telescope to the microscope, how far have we really come? And how far will we go? "style, comedy, dramatic tension"
The Stage
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November 2002: ANGEL AT LARGE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
It's the ultimate mission for a trainee angel - top secret, highly dangerous and involving plenty of foreign travel. So imagine Auriel's surprise when he accepts this risky assignment to the Middle East and discovers that he's been asked to… … babysit. But what's so special about this particular baby? And why are so many people trying to get to him first? Two kings, each with very different plans; two crunchy-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside soldiers; and, of course, a map-eating camel with a taste for mischief… Amid all the chaos, armed only with his wits and one astonishing super-power, will Auriel succeed in his quest to look after the mysterious baby? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story in Angel at Large.
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November 2002: GOD REST YOU MERRY
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Christmas Eve. A freezing car-park outside a busy hotel. And a nervous group of carol singers, only too likely to be dismayed… It's not long before the tidings of comfort and joy from the car-park set the hotel staff fighting amongst themselves - and with anyone else who gets in their way - and even the guests get dragged into the drama. As the chaos escalates, our carol-singers find themselves giving the performance of their lives. And with the arrival of the mysterious Hospodar of Moldavia - and his suspiciously camel-shaped companion - all Nöel breaks loose, and the scheming landlord threatens to send our carollers to Coventry once and for all… Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in God Rest You Merry.
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November 2002: SHEPHERDS' DELIGHT
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
It’s rotten being a shepherd. It pays peanuts. It rains. Roman soldiers shout condimentum mentae at your flocks. And now there are rumours about a mysterious masked marauder half-inching sheep from the hills around Bethlehem in the dead of night… So when their pet lamb vanishes, Nokes and Purvis race into the crowded city to look for him. But, caught up in a whirlwind of criminal activity, mistaken identity and disturbing cuisine, will they find him? Will anyone in the Flock Inn get any dinner? What’s the big surprise awaiting our heroes in a cowshed? And will it be down to the dumb animals to save the day? Again. Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story. Shepherds’ Delight also features the long-awaited return of the black sheep of Riding Lights, the infamous Snowy...
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February 2003: THE FUN OF THE FAIR
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
The Fun of the Fair will be devised in January by Riding Lights Theatre Company to support the work of World Vision - one of the world's leading relief and development agencies, currently working in nearly 100 countries, helping over 75 million people in their struggle against poverty, hunger and injustice. Since the rehearsal process is only just underway, we can't say too much about the play at the moment, but this page will be updated soon… The Fun of the Fair will be an energetic, imaginative piece of ensemble theatre - fast, challenging, moving and - most of all - fun.
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February 2003: SAVING GRACE
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
In the blacked-out landscape of the Second World War, a journalist sets out on a private pilgrimage. In the fens of Lincolnshire he searches for John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. Caught in the no-man's land between Good Friday and Easter Morning, he begins to uncover a life caught between doubt and faith, between a passion for God and a passion for women, and dangerously at odds with the established church… Riding Lights Theatre Company is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Wesley with a six-month tour of Saving Grace. A new play by Les Ellison, Saving Grace is a dynamic mix of ensemble storytelling, music and moving theatre - a captivating picture of a man overwhelmed by his faith.
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March 2003: RE:VERSE
A Production from Riding Lights / City of York Literature Development
Antony Dunn
Paul Farley
Jack Mapanje
Jo Shapcott 100% of the ticket price goes directly to MALAWI HEALTHCARE UK, a charity working to alleviate the effects of famine in Malawi.
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March 2003: NEW VOICES
A Production from York Settlement Players
THE UGLY SISTERS
Alice is striving to "get real" but when life becomes a pantomime what can she do? She's locked into the comfortable routines of family life with its secrets and lost dreams. Then onto the stage arrives Aunt Lilly the ugly sister, and now there are two. Confusion and chaos prevail to give us a
comic twist on life. The steam is rising. What will Alice do? Will she be able to break free and discover the truth of her lost father? BEFORE THE FLOOD This play is set in York between 1991 and the present. It explores private lives through public events: the 1997 election, the Gulf war and the threat of another Gulf war, the Millenium celebrations and the York floods. A group of friends are viewed through the eyes of the daughter of two of them. Teenage Astrid is collecting signatures on a petition against
attacking Iraq and as she does so she meets up with friends of her parents. They remember situations during the '90s when they were with her parents and thus we piece together possible answers to the questions of why and how her mother killed herself and her father was driven from York.
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March 2003: THE PASSION
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Riding Lights Theatre Company is invited each year to perform a Passion Play as the centrepiece of the Good Friday service in the nave of York Minster. This occasion, at the heart of our preparation for Easter, has provided a moving combination of powerful theatre, meditation, prayer and corporate worship. This year the Company is offering to tour this unique presentation to other churches in the days running up to and including Holy Week (excluding Good Friday). The major part of the evening will be a beautifully staged ensemble performance of the events leading up to the death and burial of Christ. The Passion is divided into six episodes to create space for other expressions of worship and reflection arising directly out of the drama. These additional elements have been created in collaboration with The Reverend Jeremy Fletcher, Canon Precentor of York Minster, and will be read by readers and musicians from each community hosting the performance. The whole presentation becomes a powerful act of remembrance which is both participatory and reflective - a doorway into a deeper experience of the nature of Christ’s passion.
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April 2003: US & THEM
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
Two parties arrive from opposite directions at a piece of land full of potential. Delighted with the scenery, they both decide they’ve found a place to settle. And then they notice each other... It looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, until a polite conversation about a piece of string begins to get out of hand. David Campton’s play is a funny, disturbing and painfully truthful look at what comes between us; at what makes us ‘us’, and them ‘them’. RIDING LIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE was launched in September 2001, and has around 100 members aged 11-18 from all over the York area. US & THEM is the Youth Theatre's fourth major production at Friargate Theatre and features the 11-14 age-group.
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May 2003: COMIC POTENTIAL
A Production from York Settlement Players
York’s leading amateur theatre company is back, following successful runs at Friargate Theatre of JB Priestley’s When We Are Married, Noel Coward’s Relative Values, Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table, Brian Friel’s Translations and a new-writing project, New Voices. Set in the 'forseeable' future when the stars of television daytime soaps have been replaced by 'actoids' - Comic Potential offers a satirical look at televisions formulaic plotting and cliched acting. Is comedy humanity's divine gift? Or its own invention, designed to make the rest of life bearable? Either way, could it conceivably be appreciated by a mere machine? And could such laughter ever possibly lead to love? Adam and Jacie Triplethree (JC333), star-crossed, mis-matched lovers of the next Millennium, face an uncertain future where everything has changed... except human nature. York Settlement Community Players' name dates from the founding of the Society in the 1920s when drama classes were held at the York Educational Settlement in Holgate. YSCP's aim was then, and still remains, to stage the best of all kinds of drama. The Society is proud to count Dame Judi Dench amongst its luminaries.
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May 2003: POETRY DOUBLES
A Production from Riding Lights / Read Write York
This is the first of a series of readings which will take place at York’s Friargate Theatre between four and six times a year. Each event will feature an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side.
ANDREW MOTION
was born in 1952. He read English at University College, Oxford and subsequently spent two years writing about the poetry of Edward Thomas for an M. Lit. From 1976 to 1980 he taught English at the University of Hull; from 1980 to 1982 he edited the Poetry Review and from 1982 to 1989 he was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He is a member of the Arts Council of England and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London.
His collections of poetry include The Pleasure Steamers (1978), Natural Causes (1987) and, from Faber, Love in a Life (1991), The Price of Everything (1994), Salt Water (1997), Selected Poems 1976-1997 (1998) and Public Property (2002). In February this year, Faber published his new novel, The Invention of Dr Cake. His work has received the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 1994 his biography of Philip Larkin was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Biography, and shortlisted for the NCR Award. The Lamberts won the Somerset Maugham Award. Andrew Motion was appointed as Poet Laureate in May 1999.
COLETTE BRYCE
was born in Derry in 1970 and has lived in England, Spain, and Scotland. Her work was first published in Carol Ann Duffy's Anvil New Poets in 1995, in which year she also received an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection The Heel of Bernadette was published by Picador in 2000 and won the Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection and the Eithne Strong Award in Ireland. She is Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee.
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May 2003: RUPERT BROOKE
A Production from Mark Payton
When Rupert Brooke died of septicaemia on an Aegean island in 1915, at the age of 27, he became a legend. Presented to the wartime British public by his friend Winston Churchill as the ideal of English youth in arms, the Brooke behind the legend - the Brooke of the mischievous sense of humour, the Brooke who suffered a shattering nervous breakdown - emerges as a much more fascinating, complex character: witty, boisterous, irreverent, vulnerable; author of some of the most beautiful poems - and funny letters - in the English language; with his life always doomed to be, in his own words, ‘a flash between darknesses.’ Rupert Brooke was first performed at the Oxford Playhouse. It has since toured throughout the UK and the USA and been broadcast by the BBC World Service.
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June 2003: AUGUSTUS CARP ESQ.
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Augustus Carp is a really good man… as he is the first to point out. Afflicted from birth by digestive disorders and the inability to get off a bus without falling over, Carp is nonetheless a model citizen, relentlessly pursuing the corruption that festers in all walks of public and personal life. Family man, supreme champion of the neglected sport 'Nuts in May', he uncovers the bizarre world of Edwardian Peckham that lurks round every corner. In an age when every standard of decent behaviour has been torn down, Carp is the man to place a higher example before us all. That is… …until a cloud of diabolical misfortune threatens to blot out his horizon, bringing the kind of eye-watering disaster that happens when you reach for the stars but land on Uranus. Join him as he upends the crazy paving of suburbia to expose the wriggling truth beneath. Augustus Carp Esq. is the hilarious premiere of what has been described by Anthony Burgess as 'one of the great comic novels of the 20th century'. The time has come for Carp's pearls to be cast before the wider world. You'd be mad to miss it. Augustus Carp Esq. features Riding Lights’ trademark satirical comedy, ensemble performance and penetrating insight. Paul Burbridge, Artistic Director of Riding Lights, has directed many of the company’s major productions, including The Alchemist, Friargate Theatre’s inaugural production in 2000. Bridget Foreman is an Artistic Associate of Riding Lights, and has written over a dozen plays for the company, including Dick Turpin (Friargate Theatre, 2001).
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July 2003: MISTERO BUFFO
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
'I am going to joust with the lord of the land, for he is a great balloon and I am going to burst him with the sharpness of my tongue.' Roll up! Attend the ribald antics of the jongleur, descendent of the great medieval buffoons who scratched at the consciences of Europe, delighting the crowds, infuriating the powerful. Meet head-on his comic cavalcade of rich and poor, angels and drunkards, soldiers, peasants, cheats, popes and donkeys. For the jongleur is a wise fool. He comes to town with a dangerous gospel. He slips the cork from a thrillingly raucous old bladder full of stories that explode with love of humanity, rant against oppression and a grin that goes all the way to Calvary and back. Mistero Buffo is a masterpiece of physical comedy theatre.
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July 2003: THE RED RED SHOES
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
Franvera loves to dance. As soon as she puts on her red shoes and starts to dance, she escapes the
ordinary troubles of her ordinary life. But Franvera’s world is about to be turned upside down. Her family and friends are acting very strangely, and soldiers are on the march towards her home...
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July 2003: POETRY DOUBLES 2
A Production from Riding Lights / Read Write York
The second of the Poetry Doubles series, featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side. DOUGLAS DUNN's first collection of poetry, Terry Street, was published in 1969, and was awarded both a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Love or Nothing (1974) was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1976. His other poetry books include St. Kilda's Parliament (1981), winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1981, and the acclaimed Elegies (1985), winner of Whitbread Book of the Year. Secret Villages, a collection of short stories, was published in 1985. More recent publications include a collection of short stories, Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1995), and three poetry collections, The Donkey's Ears (2000), The Year's Afternoon (2000) and New Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2002). In addition to his collections of poetry and short stories, Dunn has edited various anthologies and critical works. He has also written several television and radio plays, and has published a translation of Racine's Andromache (1990). Douglas Dunn’s Poetry Double is HENRY SHUKMAN, whose first collection, In Dr No’s Garden (Cape 2002) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
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September 2003: SAVING GRACE - NATIONAL TOUR
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
In the blacked-out landscape of the Second World War, a journalist sets out on a private pilgrimage. In the fens of Lincolnshire he searches for John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. Caught in the no-man's land between Good Friday and Easter Morning, he begins to uncover a life caught between doubt and faith, between a passion for God and a passion for women, and dangerously at odds with the established church… Riding Lights Theatre Company is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of John Wesley with a nationwide tour of Saving Grace. A new play by Les Ellison, Saving Grace is a dynamic mix of ensemble storytelling, music and moving theatre - a captivating picture of a man overwhelmed by his faith.
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September 2003: POETRY DOUBLES 3
A Production from Riding Lights / Read Write York
Wendy Cope’s collections of poetry from Faber include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, Serious Concerns and If I Don’t Know, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award on its publication in 2001. Joanne Limburg’s first collection, Femenismo (Bloodaxe 2000), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
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October 2003: THE FUN OF THE FAIR - NATIONAL TOUR
A Production from RIDING LIGHTS in association with WORLD VISION
With £500 in her suitcase, Mrs Reynolds is packed off half-way round the world, on a quest to help the poor… … only to find that her voyage lands her at the door of a run-down bicycle-repair shop in a dingy back-street. But the mechanics spin a good yarn, and Mrs Reynolds is drawn into an exhilarating round of storytelling - meeting fellow travellers with lives of energy and enterprise, comedy and disaster from across the world. And through them, Mrs Reynolds discovers the last stretch of her own astonishing journey. The Fun of the Fair is a dynamic, uplifting piece of ensemble theatre. It's fast, provocative, moving and - most of all - fun.
The National Tour of The Fun of the Fair follows the widely acclaimed national autumn tours of Science Friction and First Hand (2002), Love Fifteen (2001), Friendly Fire (2000), Balancing Act (1999) and a different drum (1998).
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October 2003: THE FALL OF MAN
A Production from York Settlement Players
Alan is on the horns of a dilemma, and the fact that he is playing Satan in a York Wagon play is only part of the story. In this adult comedy by Graham Sanderson, set during rehearsals for ‘The Fall of Man’, new knowledge and forbidden fruit are all around… and Alan’s search for the truth about his sexuality upsets a whole load of apple-carts on and off stage. York's leading amateur company returns, with a new play by local playwright, Graham Sanderson.
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November 2003: ANGEL AT LARGE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
It's the ultimate mission for a trainee angel - top secret, highly dangerous, plenty of foreign travel. So imagine Auriel's surprise when he accepts this risky assignment and discovers that he's been asked to… babysit. But what's so special about this particular baby? And why are so many people trying to get to him first? Two kings, each with very different plans; two crunchy-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside soldiers; and, of course, a map-eating camel with a taste for mischief… Amid all the chaos, armed only with his wits and one astonishing super-power, will Auriel succeed in his quest to look after the mysterious baby? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story in Angel at Large.
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November 2003: GOD REST YOU MERRY
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Christmas Eve. A freezing car-park outside a busy hotel. And a nervous group of carol singers, only too likely to be dismayed… It's not long before the tidings of comfort and joy from the car-park set the hotel staff fighting amongst themselves - and with anyone else who gets in their way - and even the guests get dragged into the drama. As the chaos escalates, our carol-singers find themselves giving the performance of their lives. And with the arrival of the mysterious Hospodar of Moldavia - and his suspiciously camel-shaped companion - all Nöel breaks loose, and the scheming landlord threatens to send our carollers to Coventry once and for all… Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in God Rest You Merry.
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November 2003: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Is this the only life there can be, or are there parallel universes? If there are other universes, is it possible to enter them? And why is it only herbal tea-bags that have those little strings on them? Such questions have exercised the mind of man since time immemorial. Well, since 1BC, actually, when the mind in question was that of Tertullian 'The Teaspoon' Windsock. Unable to get a university grant, he and his cousin roam the ancient world (or, as he calls it, the modern world) in search of work. If it's paid, no questions asked. They find themselves helping out a beleaguered innkeeper in Bethlehem, arguing physics and metaphysics with King Caspar from Persia, dodging an omnivorous camel and outwitting crass and belligerent officialdom. And having a lot of fun... They finally discover the beginnings of a solution to their deepest questions in a day-old baby, who also shows them that some things keep best by being given away - a concept which is quite logical in a world where the square root of 4 is both 2 and minus 2. Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in When Worlds Collide.
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November 2003: POETRY DOUBLES 4
A Production from Riding Lights / Read Write York
A series of readings taking place at York’s Friargate Theatre up to six times a year, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side.
FLEUR ADCOCK
Fleur Adcock has published ten previous books of poetry, most recently, Looking Back (Oxford 1997) and Poems 1960-2000 (Bloodaxe 2000). She has edited and co-edited several anthologies, including The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Women's Poetry and The Oxford Book of Creatures. She has translated collections by two Romanian poets as well as a book of medieval Latin poems, The Virgin & the Nightingale (Bloodaxe). Fleur Adcock has received several awards, including a Cholmondeley Award in 1976 and a New Zealand National Book Award in 1984, and she was given an OBE in 1996. She lives in London.
JULIAN STANNARD
Julian Stannard was born in 1962. He has published studies of Fleur Adcock and Basil Bunting, and has published poems widely in journals and magazines, including the Faber introductory anthology First Pressings. Many of the poems in Rina's War - his first full collection - are about Genoa and the surrounding area.
"I like the cosmopolitanism of these poems. This is not just a matter of crossing national frontiers with ease, but a seemingly boundless curiosity about human behaviour at all levels. I trust Julian Stannard's observations of the world, for their accuracy and their spirit." - Christopher Reid
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December 2003: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
A Production from York Shakespeare Project
The York Shakespeare Project presents The Comedy of Errors set in a northern Victorian mill town as the third production in its ambitious plan to perform all Shakespeare's plays in and around York over the next 20 years. The project has York-born Dame Judi Dench, actor Sir Antony Sher and former Royal Shakespeare Company director Adrian Noble as patrons, and has already performed Richard III and a cross-dressing The Taming of the Shrew to acclaim.
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December 2003: A CHRISTMAS CAROL
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
“I’m here to warn you. To give you a chance of escaping my fate. And to bring you some hope. You will be haunted by three ghosts...” Ebenezer Scrooge, London’s most embittered skinflint, is having a very bad week. As if being surrounded by the loving Cratchits, his faithful nephew Fred, and a thousand citizens brimming over with seasonal jollity weren’t bad enough, now he’s facing three nights of some really alarming festive spirits. RIDING LIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE was launched
in September 2001, and has over 100 members
aged 11-19 from all over the York area. A CHRISTMAS CAROL is the Youth Theatre's
eighth major production at Friargate Theatre
and features both the 11-13 and the 14-19 age-groups.
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January 2004: SCIENCE FRICTION
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
In a world where scientists are often accused of 'playing God', how can we combine the volatile elements of scientific discovery, faith and moral responsibility? From accusations of heresy levelled at sixteenth-century astronomers, through the ongoing 'creation versus evolution' debate, to the explosive possibilities of human cloning, the Church and the world of science have often been deeply opposed, unable to speak a common language. Science Friction takes a dramatic, innovative look into this vast issue by turning a lens on two extraordinary stories: Galileo's study of the heavens, which rocked the Church's universe; and a genetic research scientist who, today, finds her professional and personal convictions clashing with life-changing effects. Riding Lights intertwines these two stories in typically dynamic style. Gripping, entertaining, challenging, Science Friction asks, 'From the telescope to the microscope, how far have we really come? And how far will we go?'
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January 2004: POETRY DOUBLES 5
A Production from Riding Lights / Read Write York
"I'm a strong supporter of the idea that writers who have been around for a long time and who are in a position to 'help' other writers, if that's the right word, should do so. The premise of Poetry Doubles is a very good one."
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate A series of readings taking place at York’s Friargate Theatre up to six times a year, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side. BERNARD O'DONOGHUE
Bernard O'Donoghue was born in Cullen, Co. Cork in 1945. He is a Fellow of Wadham College, oxford, where he teaches Medieval English. Chatto have published four collections, The Weakness (1991), Gunpowder (winner of the 1995 Whitbread Award for Poetry), Here Nor There (1999) which was a Poetry Book Society Choice title, and Outliving (sortlisted for the 2003 TS Eliot Prize). "O'Donoghue writes with a crisp precision and the attractive style of a story-teller; but it is in the unfussy details that he gets to the heart of the significance of the smallest gestures and the quietest lives." - Guardian
HELEN FARISH
Helen Farish's first collection, Information for a Lover, will be published by Jonathan Cape. She will also appear in the 2004 Oxford Poets anthology from Carcanet. Work has previously been published in the 2000 Poetry School anthology, Tying the Song; Wild Cards, Virago; The Ring of Words, Daily Telegraph/Arvon anthology; PN Review; London Magazine; Poetry London; Feminist Review; Stand. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1997 and a grant from Arts Council England, South-East, in 2003. She lives in Oxford where she is writing a doctoral thesis on Sharon Olds and Louise Gluck. She also teaches literature and creative writing.
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February 2004: THE PASSION
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Riding Lights Theatre Company is invited each year to perform a Passion Play as the centrepiece of the Good Friday service in the nave of York Minster. This occasion, at the heart of our preparation for Easter, has provided a moving combination of powerful theatre, meditation, prayer and corporate worship. This year the Company is touring this unique presentation to other churches throughout Lent. The major part of the evening is a beautifully staged ensemble performance of the events leading up to the death and burial of Christ. The Passion is divided into six episodes to create space for other expressions of worship and reflection arising directly out of the drama. These additional elements have been created in collaboration with The Reverend Jeremy Fletcher, Canon Precentor of York Minster, and will be read by readers and musicians from each community hosting the performance. The whole presentation becomes a powerful act of remembrance which is both participatory and reflective - a doorway into a deeper experience of the nature of Christ’s passion.
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March 2004: THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN
A Production from York Settlement Players
How can you be good when everybody is trying to rip you off? How can you protect yourself against those you love as well as those you fear? Are people vicious by nature or is society to blame? In Brecht’s fable, The Good Person of Szechwan, the answers are sometimes stark, sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, but always sharply observed. York Settlement Players’ production sets the play in an inner-city blighted by poverty and drugs, but tries to bring out the comedy and the irony in the script as well. A must-see for students of Drama and Theatre, this is also a play that has important things to say to anyone interested in the confusing world we live in.
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March 2004: HEADSTRONG
A Production from RIDING LIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE
Two young women, thrown together on a ship around the world - one a spoiled heiress, the other her servant - but both equally headstrong. With months at sea ahead of them, Lila Mae encounters a doctor who makes a surprising diagnosis, and prescribes an even more surprising cure. Soon it’s hard to tell who’s in control and who’s being controlled. When Rose decides that her mistress’s medicine is worse than her illness, she knows she needs a truly incendiary plan to get them both free... * * * RIDING LIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE was launched in September 2001, and has over 100 members aged 11-19 from all over the York area. HEADSTRONG is the Youth Theatre's ninth major production at Friargate Theatre and features the 14-19 age-group. This production is Riding Lights Youth Theatre’s contribution to the National Theatre’s SHELL CONNECTIONS 2004. Youth theatres across the UK are taking part in the project, which culminates in July 2004 with a summer festival at the National Theatre where twelve companies are invited to perform.
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April 2004: POETRY DOUBLES 6
A Production from RIDING LIGHTS
"I'm a strong supporter of the idea that writers who have been around for a long time and who are in a position to 'help' other writers, if that's the right word, should do so. The premise of Poetry Doubles is a very good one."
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate A series of readings taking place at York’s Friargate Theatre up to six times a year, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side.
ANNE STEVENSON
Anne Stevenson has published twelve collections of poetry, a book of essays, Between the Iceberg and the Ship (1998), a recent critical study, Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop (1998) and a biography of Sylvia Plath, Bitter Fame (1989). Granny Scarecrow (Bloodaxe 2000) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize; A Report from the Border (Bloodaxe 2003) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and is her most recent collection since The Collected Poems 1955-1995 (now available from Bloodaxe) was published by OUP in 1996. She was the inaugural winner of the £60,000 Northern Rock Writer Award (2002). "In every generation one is afraid that they are not making poets like her any more."
Peter Levi (Poetry Review) "One of the most intelligent, assured, vivid and skilful poets writing today."
Gerard Woodward (Times Literary Supplement)
ANGELA LEIGHTON
Angela Leighton was born in Wakefield, educated in Edinburgh and Oxford, and currently teaches at the University of Hull. She has published various critical works, She began writing poetry after the death of her father, and her first volume, A Cold Spell, was published by Shoestring Press in 2000. She is currently working on a second collection.
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April 2004: INVISIBLE INK
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Poppy's grandad is down in the dump. And so he should be, because he works there. But he's gloomy, too. Perfectly miserable, in fact. And Poppy wants to cheer him up. So Poppy sets off on a quest to bring him back his Happiness, but she soon discovers that capturing it isn't as simple as she thought… … until she runs into The Poet. He's a mysterious chap. He can't tie his own shoelaces, but what he can do is help Poppy weave a web of words to catch even the slipperiest of creatures. Invisible Ink is fast and funny, colourful and creative, intelligent and interactive. Every performance involves the audience in the creation of a poem, giving an insight into the writer's world of language and imagination, and beginning to equip the children with invaluable creative-writing skills.
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June 2004: ON THE LINE
A Production from MIKRON THEATRE COMPANY 2004
The age of the railways began in 1804, when the Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick, ran a steam locomotive on the Penydarren Tramway. With its usual touch of humour and original songs and music, Mikron tracks down the real story of this important part of our heritage. We’ve all been there. Travelling on a train which grinds to a halt. What’s happening? Will they tell us? Am I going to be late – again? Four people are stuck on a train in a cutting with no contact with the outside world. As they are faced with the reality of today, the past catches up with them – the early railway pioneers, the glory days of steam, the era of the Big Four. They cross the points into nationalisation and electrification, get delayed by Dr Beeching and sidetracked by privatisation. Will they end up speeding into a high-tech future?
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June 2004: JORVIK LITE
A Production from York Comedy Festival / Jorvik Viking Centre
To mark its twentieth year, JORVIK Viking Centre is inviting six up and coming comedians to each squeeze 1000 years of Viking tradition and archaeology into ten hilarious minutes. This will be a history lesson like no other you've had before! JORVIK Lite is compered by Electric Forcast, a high enery duo described as 'rapid-fire comedy...quirky, physical and seriously weird'. York Comedy Festival
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June 2004: POETRY DOUBLES
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
A series of readings taking place at York’s Friargate Theatre up to six times a year, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side. This Fundraising Special, featuring Riding Lights' pair of resident poets, will contribute to the Company's £100,000 campaign to install a lift in Friargate Theatre, creating access for people with disabilities to Riding Lights' own work, and the work of visiting companies and performers.
NIGEL FORDE
Nigel Forde, born in Leeds, began his career as an actor at York Theatre Royal, then co-founded Riding Lights Theatre Company in 1977. He has been a contributor to BBC radio and is best known for presenting Radio 4’s Bookshelf. He has also written screenplays, one of which was nominated for a BAFTA and won an EMMY. He has published eight books to date including A Map of the Territory (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2003), Teaching the Wind Plurals (Robson) and A Motley Wisdom: The Best of G.K. Chesterton (Hodder). “Nigel Forde is a natural poet. There’s no sense of striving after effect. It’s obvious that both experience and thought make their impact on him in a rich mixture of imagery, rhythm and structure that enables them to be carried to us effortlessly.”
Arnold Wesker
ANTONY DUNN
Antony Dunn was born in London in 1973, and won the Newdigate Prize in 1995. He has published two collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford Poets 1998) and Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2002). He received a Society of Authors' Eric Gregory Award in 2000, and was one of five young writers to take part in the Arts Council's national First Lines Poetry Tour in 2001. He also writes for film and the stage, and lives in York, where he works for Riding Lights Theatre Company at Friargate Theatre, and as a tutor for The Poetry School. "An often unique voice… subtle, thought-provoking and enormously readable."
Poetry Review
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June 2004: LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME
A Production from York Settlement Players
This improbable comedy tells the story of Lord Arthur who has his palm read by Podgers, who tells him he will commit a murder. Lord Arthur feels duty bound to get it over with before his marriage to Sybil. Aided by the anarchist Winkelkopf his attempts prove futile but it emerges Podgers is a charlatan and Lord Arthur is free. But on the way to the wedding rehearsal he finds the carriage contains Winkelhopf's newest bomb...
Friargate Theatre is delighted to welcome, once again, York Settlement Players - York's leading amateur dramatic company.
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July 2004: HOPE OPERA
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Imagine a house in Liverpool. A mismatched group of people trading tales of their great scrapes and escapes. Pushing bags of the white stuff around a table with scarred and tattooed fists. It’s flour, of course. They’re making bread. This is a place where stories are the stuff of life, where giants knead their dough shoulder to shoulder with bag ladies, where a hundred tiny miracles transform tragedy to comedy every day. This is a place where people live their own stories; where sharing your story could turn your life around. Hope Opera’s a place at that table, in with the mix of characters from heroes to hopeless cases: the boy with nothing but his tattoos to his name, the girl whose curiosity got the better of her, the man made of anger. Telling extraordinary stories in extraordinary ways… colourful, moving, unforgettable, Riding Lights Theatre Company is renowned for theatre that stops you in your tracks, turns things round, and starts you off in new directions. With a remarkable blend of grit and grandeur, masks and music, people are getting a grip on the stuff of real life.
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July 2004: LIKELY STORIES
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
A 45-minute version for prisons of Riding Lights touring production, Hope Opera.
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July 2004: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER
A Production from RIDING LIGHTS YOUTH THEATRE
The things in the picture were moving... and Lucy felt all her hair whipping around her face as it does on a windy day. A great cold salt splash broke right out of the frame and they were breathless from the smack of it... Suddenly, Lucy and Edmund - and their horrible cousin Eustace - are pulled out of the spare bedroom and into the picture, and the fantastic world of Narnia. Now aboard the gallant ship, the Dawn Treader, they travel with young King Caspian to find seven missing noblemen. But on their way they encounter creatures who think they’re the ugliest in the world - despite being invisible; a dragon who seems oddly familiar; and even, maybe just for a moment, the great Aslan himself. And what will happen when they reach the Uttermost East - the fabled end of the world - and discover that their destination isn’t at all what they thought it would be?
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October 2004: THE MEMORY OF WATER
A Production from York Settlement Players
York's premier amateur theatre company return to Friargate with The Memory of Water. Winner of the 2000 Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Comedy, this wise and funny play celebrates the lives of three sisters reunited on the eve of their mother's funeral. As the sisters come to terms with each other and their loss, we are treated to a fabulous roller coaster of insight, denial, and hysterical laughter. This challenging and exciting piece will be directed by Helen Wilson (who played Shen Teh to critical acclaim in York Settlement Players' recent production of The Good Person of Szechwan).
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November 2004: WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Is this the only life there can be, or are there parallel universes? If there are other universes, is it possible to enter them? And why is it only herbal tea-bags that have those little strings on them? Such questions have exercised the mind of man since time immemorial. Well, since 1BC, actually, when the mind in question was that of Tertullian 'The Teaspoon' Windsock. Unable to get a university grant, he and his cousin roam the ancient world (or, as he calls it, the modern world) in search of work. If it's paid, no questions asked. They find themselves helping out a beleaguered innkeeper in Bethlehem, arguing physics and metaphysics with King Caspar from Persia, dodging an omnivorous camel and outwitting crass and belligerent officialdom. And having a lot of fun... They finally discover the beginnings of a solution to their deepest questions in a day-old baby, who also shows them that some things keep best by being given away - a concept which is quite logical in a world where the square root of 4 is both 2 and minus 2. Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in When Worlds Collide.
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November 2004: SIGNS AND BLUNDERS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
For the Blunder family, being in Bethlehem is bad for business… The Bucket and Spade Inn, left to them by their parents, is being torn apart… Jabez Blunder wants to run it cheap, and style guru Jacob wants to glam it up. Caught in the middle is Jo Blunder, and all she gets is a manky old stable. As if this weren’t bad enough, a King’s demented donkey insists on trashing the toilets, an Angel needs stuffing and worst of all the Romans are coming. Yet amidst all the chasing after money, power, prestige and taxidermy, something strange is about to happen… Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in Signs and Blunders.
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November 2004: ENTERING THE TAPESTRY
A Production from The Poetry School
The Tour features over 25 newly established poets and tour visits eight towns and cities across the UK. Performances feature poets who have been published in The Poetry School’s acclaimed anthology, Entering the Tapestry, published last year by Enitharmon Press. All the poets involved are beginning their careers as poets, developing their writing ‘voices’ and developing their individual performance styles. Each performance has been prepared to ensure that the poetry lifts effortlessly off the page. With each event featuring three different poets there will be plenty of variety making these ideal events for anyone who is new to contemporary poetry performances. CHRIS BECKETT
grew up in Ethiopia before being sent to school in Yorkshire and Surrey. He has worked in trucking and shipping in Australia and Japan, but now lives in London and trades sugar on the international markets. He won the Poetry London Competition in 2001 and his first collection ‘The Dog Who Thinks He's A Fish’ was published by Smith/Doorstop in Sept 2004. FAWZIA KANE
was born in Trinidad and came to the UK to study architecture in 1980. She now lives and works in London. Her poetry has most recently been featured in Poetry Wales, The Shop, The Interpreter's House, and is due for publication in Agenda. ANNE RYLAND
moved from London to Berwick-upon-Tweed five years ago, where she teaches adults at her local community centre. In 2002 she gained an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University. Her poems are widely published in magazines (e.g. Acumen, London Magazine, Staple, Smiths Knoll and The Interpreter's House), and also appear in the anthologies ‘Making Worlds’ (Headland, 2003) and in ‘Four Caves of the Heart’ (Second Light, 2004).
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December 2004: LOVE'S LABOURS LOST
A Production from York Shakespeare Project
"O, I am yours, and all that I possess!" "All the fool mine?" Welcome to leafy Navarre where the King and three friends make an oath to live an austere life of study and give up love and women. Imagine their predicament when four beauties from France arrive on the doorstep, demanding attention and hospitality. With love letters being mixed up, the local rustics (and a mad Spaniard) misbehaving, it's one of Shakespeare's finest comedies - not to be missed...
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January 2005: A TRIBUTE TO MAIRI MACINNES
A Production from Riding Lights / Shoestring Press
The evening also features the launch of the new Shoestring Press book, Mairi MacInnes: A Tribute. Edited by Peter Robinson, it contains new writing from all the authors appearing at this event, and many more including Dannie Abse, Alan Brownjohn, Charles Tomlinson. It also features a selection of new poetry by Mairi MacInnes herself, who will be available to sign copies of the book, and of her other published works. Mairi MacInnes was born in County Durham and educated in Yorkshire and at Somerville College, Oxford. She lived in America, where she won National Endowment in the Arts and Ingram-Merrill Fellowships, for nearly thirty years before retiring to York, where she still lives. Her collections of poetry include The Pebble (University of Illinois Press 2000), The Ghostwriter (Bloodaxe 1999) and Elsewhere and Back: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 1993). The first volume of her memoirs, Clearances, was published by Pantheon in 2002.
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January 2005: MISTERO BUFFO
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
“I am going to joust with the lord of the land, for he is a great balloon and I am going to burst him with the sharpness of my tongue.” Roll up! Attend the ribald antics of the jongleur, descendent of the great medieval buffoons who scratched at the consciences of Europe, delighting the crowds, infuriating the powerful. Meet head-on his comic cavalcade of rich and poor, angels and drunkards, soldiers, peasants, cheats, popes and donkeys. The jongleur is a wise fool. He comes to town with a dangerous gospel - thrillingly raucous stories that explode with love of humanity and rant against oppression - and a grin that goes all the way to Calvary and back. “a masterpiece of physical comedy theatre” The popular and controversial playwright, actor and director, Dario Fo has earned international acclaim for his political satires and farces. His best known plays include Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Can't Pay? Won't Pay! and The Open Couple. In 1997, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, 'for emulating the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.'
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February 2005: FLIGHT CASES
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Take off on a journey of breath-taking views, exhilarating experiences, and horizons wider than you imagined… Ditch your excess baggage, hitch up your flight-socks and fasten your seatbelt for the trip of your life, taking in the strangest and the most familiar places. Flight Cases takes you from the other side of the world to the other end of your street – an adventure that lifts you out of the everyday, crosses borders and boundaries and delivers you into surprising new territory. Riding Lights Roughshod is famed for creating dynamic ensemble theatre with a spiritual heart. Flight Cases is an elevating collection of stories – moving, challenging and hilarious. Check in with Flight Cases, and touch down in the place you least expected.
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March 2005: A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL
A Production from York Settlement Players
Friargate Theatre is delighted, once again, to welcome York's premier amateur theatre company. One of Ayckbourn's funniest and best loved comedies, A Chorus of Disapproval is the story of a diffident widower who attempts to escape from his loneliness by joining the local amateur light operatic society. By accident, rather than by design (in fact, by not saying no to anything, be it a request to obtain confidential information from his company or an offer of illicit sex) he advances from a one-line part to the leading role of Captain MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera. Ayckbourn's script shows us how painfully embarrassed are the British in the face of emotion and keeps us laughing in happy recognition.
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April 2005: HOPE'S KITCHEN
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Imagine a house round the corner from you - four friends trading tales of their great scrapes and escapes. This is a place where stories are the stuff of life. A place where people live their own stories; where sharing your story could open up a window into eternity. Hope’s Kitchen is a place at that table, with the tramp who magics himself a marriage with a princess, the actor who travels to Africa and finds himself at the very bottom of the world, the heroic Swedish boy with his two remarkable goats, the vicar who tries to stop herself cracking up... with Polyfilla. Hope’s Kitchen is a collection of extraordinary stories told in extraordinary ways. These are colourful, moving, unforgettable tales of people finding hope in the strangest of places.
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April 2005: LIKELY STORIES
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
After the enormous success of the 2004 tour, and thanks to a second generous grant from The Anchor Foundation, Riding Lights is now touring this abbreviated version of Hope’s Kitchen to a further 20 prisons and Young Offenders’ Institutes across the UK. We are delighted to be able to give these performances free of charge. More information and tour dates for Hope's Kitchen here.
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April 2005: FIVE THEATRE WORKSHOPS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
SHAKESPEARE - with Mark Payton
Gallop apace through all aspects of acting Shakespeare, with much ado about how the text and verse guides us as to the physical action required in the playing of a scene. Making the plays come alive with focus on Shakespeare’s dramatic techniques and rehearsal exercises involving various aspects of voice, movement and imagination: Text - how the foundations of the drama inform and guide us. Language - how the poetry makes the play vibrant and engaging. Verse - how the rhythms and vitality of the writing make demands of the actor’s voice to dramatic effect. Movement - how we discover the physical action required through the clues Shakespeare gives us. All the time, in Hamlet’s words, suiting “the action to the word, the word to the action…” in a lightning journey from page to stage. Suitable for actors, teachers, workshop leaders and anyone interested in discovering more about acting Shakespeare.
IMPROVISATION - with Paul Birch
Welcome to the theatre of the impossible. When anything could, can and probably will happen. Participants will learn improvisation skills that will build confidence and enable them to do anything, anywhere at the drop of a line. Scared of improvising? Stuck for ideas? This is the place. Comedy and tragedy, from the sublime to the ridiculous, this is an evening where everyone and anyone can create instant theatre. Rehearsals just got thrown out of the window…
PHYSICAL THEATRE - with Clyde Bain
Discovering creative movement ideas through play and exploration. This will be a vigorously physical day beginning with warm up games followed by a general level technique class suitable for all abilities. Through a series of tasks and games participants will layer different movement ideas to create choreography both individually and with others. Some of these pieces will be abstract and others will begin to play with theme or narrative ideas. Please bring trainers or dance / jazz shoes and wear loose and comfortable clothing.
DIRECTING - with Bridget Foreman
‘Only directing a play can teach you to direct a play’ (Former National Theatre director, Richard Eyre). Which may be true, but this workshop is an opportunity to explore some approaches and techniques to directing: from staging and storytelling to unlocking text and helping actors to discover performances. When someone asked legendary director Peter Brook what a director does, he answered, ‘get the actors on and off stage.’ A fun, fast-paced and participatory day.
TEXT ALIVE - with David Gann Work with professional actor, teacher and director David Gann on the primary vehicle of expression given to the actor: the voice. Is it time for a reality check on yours? Are you sick of the sound of it? Allow David to give it a fine tune, and learn a few simple techniques to stop your audience falling asleep (unless of course it's a night time story!). Using a few simple texts such as children's poetry, narrative prose, and maybe even touch on some Shakespeare, he will show you how to explore your ability to invest your voice with clarity, colour and conviction that will bring you and the text alive! If you like, you are encouraged to bring your own favourite (short) poem/text, and there may be a chance to perform it to the group.
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June 2005: THE PHILANTHROPIST
A Production from York Settlement Community Players
York's premier amateur theatre company returns with an evening of love, sex, conflict, wit, philanthropy, death and the meaning of life. Hard on the heels of the success of A Chorus of Disapproval, the group is back with this witty play by Christopher Hampton, who adapted Les Liaisons Dangereuses. After a dinner party ends with a huge shock, a university don and his friends have their views on life severely challenged as the plot further unfolds. Meanwhile, in the world at large, the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet are being done away with. The play begins with quite a bang...
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July 2005: KRINDLEKRAX
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
It was the day for choosing a hero. Ruskin Splinter is small and thin. The idea of him battling a dragon in the school play makes the whole class laugh. But beneath the dark bricks and cracked pavements of Lizard Street lurks the mysterious Krindlekrax. And when Krindlekrax threatens Lizard Street, Ruskin has the chance to prove he really is the stuff heroes are made of... Riding Lights Youth Theatre's 11-14 age group are proud to present the world amateur premier of Philip Ridley rip-roaring new stage play.
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July 2005: RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
Welcome to the theatre of the impossible, where anything could, can, and probably will happen. Riding Lights Youth Theatre's 14-18 age group present an evening of improvised comedy and theatre - lightning wit, off-the-cuff jokes and spontaneous drama. A sparkling evening.
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August 2005: MUSIC & DRAMA PROJECT FOR AGES 9-13
A Production from Riding Lights / National Centre for Early Music
In just one week, learn and perform a new musical play based on the life and stories of Hans Christian Andersen. Flying trunks, magic shoes, fireworks and fantasy combine with the historic visit that Hans made to York in 1847. Nothing is what it seems and everything is possible in this larger than life stage extravaganza! If you are aged 9 -13 and you like singing and drama, this project is for you. In just one week we will learn and perform a new musical play based on the life and stories of Hans Christian Andersen. He wrote over one hundred tales. Some of his stories are very famous, such as The Ugly Duckling or The Little Mermaid, but many of them are less well known and some are quite spooky... You do not need to have any experience of music or drama to take part in this project - just lots of commitment and enthusiasm. During the project, you need to come to the National Centre For Early Music from 10.00am until 4.00pm each day. You should bring a packed lunch and a drink, and wear comfortable clothes and shoes.
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September 2005: REMEMBER, REMEMBER...
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Everard leads a charmed existence – one of the King’s bright young things, with a glamorous house, a glamorous wife and a devout faith in God. But his world is turned upside down when a gang of well-heeled terrorists explodes into his life. And three years after being knighted by James I, he finds himself under a different kind of sword, on trial as a traitor. Remember, Remember… is a crackling new play about Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators, to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. To light up our not-so-new age of terror.
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October 2005: CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
A Production from York Settlement Players
Friargate Theatre is delighted to welcome back York’s premier amateur theatre company with, arguably, Tennessee Williams’ most famous and controversial play. It has won the Pulitzer Prize and has a plot which revolves around lust and passion as well as frustration, greed and power struggles wreaking havoc within a wealthy family in the Deep South of America. There are huge unresolved tensions in this barbed comedy, among all the characters but particularly between the terminally ill patriarch Big Daddy, his youngest son Brick, an alcoholic ex-sports star, and his gorgeous, feline wife Maggie ‘the Cat’ who simmers with intensity. The fireworks are guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your neck and leave you feeling that the ‘slice of life’ you’ve just glimpsed isn’t too far removed from the raw humanity of your own experiences. This play is presented by special arrangement with The University of the South Sewanee, Tennessee, USA.
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November 2005: SCRUB THAT MANGER!
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Hannah’s got her work cut out. The family B&B is overflowing with tourists, and where there are guests there’s mess. Suddenly a young couple turn up out of the blue with a very unusual load, and Hannah discovers why one small bundle of joy can sometimes lead to a whole bundle of trouble… So what’s Hannah’s mum got against that lovely young shepherd chap? Will the real story in the midst of the chaos get swept under the carpet? And can remembering the words ‘Blue for the loo’ really be good for your teeth? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in Scrub That Manger!
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November 2005: SIGNS AND BLUNDERS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
For the Blunder family, being in Bethlehem is bad for business… The Bucket and Spade Inn, left to them by their parents, is being torn apart… Jabez Blunder wants to run it cheap, and style guru Jacob wants to glam it up. Caught in the middle is Jo Blunder, and all she gets is a manky old stable. As if this weren’t bad enough, a King’s demented donkey insists on trashing the toilets, the Romans are coming and, worst of all, one of them wants a foot massage… Yet amidst all the chasing after money, power, prestige and plumbing, something strange and wonderful is about to happen… Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in Signs and Blunders.
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November 2005: TROJAN WOMEN
A Production from Actors of Dionysus
A world war and a city taken. The men all massacred. The women in a transit camp awaiting allocation. But this is not the end. Behind the scenes more powerful forces are at work, and who are we to know the future? A revival of aod's inspirational production of one of the world's earliest anti-war plays. "A beautifully acted production - it keeps the emotion bottled up so well that when it does fizz out in an explosion of fury, agony and spit, it is all the more frightening."
The Guardian
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November 2005: POETRY DOUBLES
A Production from Riding Lights and The Poetry School
ALICE OSWALD Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. She has published three collections of poems. The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile won the Forward Prize and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 1996. Dart won the TS Eliot Prize in 2002, and Woods etc (2005) is a Poetry Book Society Choice. She is also editor of the anthology The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet (Faber 2005). ‘an heir to Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill’
The Times
SEAN BORODALE
Sean Borodale is a poet and artist. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, was Northern Arts Fellow at the Wordsworth Trust in Cumbria (1999) and Guest Artist at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2002). He lives in Somerset with his wife and their son. His topographical work, Notes for an Atlas (2003), is a 370-page poem written whilst walking through London. Robert Macfarlane wrote in the Guardian of Notes for an Atlas that ‘it rings with sadness, haphazardness and utterly modern beauty.' He is currently writing a collection of shorter poems. Poetry Doubles is a series of readings at York’s Friargate Theatre, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - presenting some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side. "I'm a strong supporter of the idea that writers who have been around for a long time and who are in a position to 'help' other writers, if that's the right word, should do so. The premise of Poetry Doubles is a very good one."
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate
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November 2005: THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
A Production from York Shakespeare Project
Leaving behind both home and beloved, a young man travels to Milan to meet his closest friend. There he falls in love with his friend’s new sweetheart and resolves to seduce her. Love-crazed and desperate, he is soon moved to commit some cynical acts of betrayal... This staging of Shakespeare’s early comedy is the 7th production by York Shakespeare Project, which plans to perform every one of Shakespeare’s plays in York over the course of 20 years.
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December 2005: BEDROOM FARCE
A Production from Dringhouses Dramatic Society
Trevor and Susannah have a difficult marriage. They arrive separately at a party given by Malcolm and Kate. Also there is Trevor's ex, Jan, whose husband, Nick, is stuck in bed with a bad back. Meanwhile Trevor's parents, Ernest and Delia, plan a quiet evening together. Trevor and Susannah's unfortunate effects on all around them are only increased by their ill-judged attempts to make amends. The result is painfully funny. Set in three bedrooms, this play was first performed in Scarborough in 1975, then in London in 1977. Since then it has been staged many times, and has become one of Ayckbourn's best-loved comedies.
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December 2005: JULIUS CAESAR
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
Trust no one. Julius Caesar, ultra-successful Emperor of Rome, returns victorious from war. Caught up in his new and terrifying ambition, he unwittingly ignites an inferno of plot and counter-plot, of deceit and betrayal, stirring up forces far beyond his control. Julius Caesar, the earliest of Shakespeare's Roman plays, is a gripping political thriller exploring the complexities of power and the opposing dynamics of democracy and tyranny.
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January 2006: POET TO POET: YANG LIAN & POLLY CLARK
A Production from Riding Lights & Read Write York
In 2005, Yang Lian and Polly Clark brought together two teams of poets from China and the UK to translate each other's work and to create new writing. In this extraordinary event, they read from their own poetry and from the groups' new writing, and talk about the Poet to Poet project with Antony Dunn, one of the poets involved in the exchange. YANG LIAN Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955, and grew up in Beijing. He began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. On his return to Beijing he became one of the first group of young ‘underground’ poets, who published the literary magazine Jintian. Yang Lian’s poems became well-known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his poem ‘Norlang’ was criticized by the Chinese government during the ‘Anti-Spiritual Pollution’ movement. Yang Lian was invited to visit Australia and New Zealand in 1988 and became a poet in exile after the Tian’anmen massacre. Since that time, he has continued to write and speak out as a highly individual voice in world literature, politics and culture. Yang Lian has published seven selections of poems, two selections of prose and many essays in Chinese. His work has also been translated into more than twenty languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Eastern European languages. Yang Lian was awarded the Flaiano International Poetry Prize (Italy, 1999) and his book Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems won the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation 1999. His three volumes of collected works, Yang Lian Zuo Pin 1982-1997 and Yang Lian Xin Zuo 1998-2002 have eventually been published in China. His most recent translations into English have been Yi, a book-length poem, and Notes of a Blissful Ghost, a selection of poems. His new book Concentric Circles was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2005.
POLLY CLARK
Polly Clark’s first collection, Kiss (Bloodaxe 2000), was a Poetry Society Recommendation, and her second, Take Me With You (Bloodaxe 2005) is Poetry Scoiety Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2005.
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February 2006: THE WINTER'S TALE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
"swift, intelligent, charming... directed with tact, pace, fresh jokes and many a sharp insight... pure pleasure"
Financial Times A CROWN, A PALACE, AN ISLAND in the Med, a delightful wife and family - they sound like the stuff of paradise, the life of the man who has everything. But that man is Leontes and this Sicilian paradise has a spider swimming in its claret… the poison of an obsessive suspicion destroying everything he holds dear. But even while things are at their darkest, the seasons turn and The Winter's Tale bursts into new life with irresistible energy and high comedy - a riot of young love, faithful friendship, summer and celebration.
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February 2006: SIX THEATRE WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
SHAKESPEARE
with Mark Payton
Sat 4 Feb, 10.00am - 5.00pm, £25.00 Mark Payton leads a workshop examining Shakespeare’s late plays. The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline and Pericles have always puzzled scholars who have been unable to categorise them as Comedies, Histories or whatever. They are variously referred to as The Late Plays, The Resolution Plays, The Later Romances and The Problem Plays. This workshop will look at the challenges actors face in performing these plays - the heady mixture of tragedy and comedy, the balance of reality and melodrama, the beautifully complex verse forms, the ludicrous plots! Some see these deeply moving plays - about redemption after suffering, and reaching a longed-for goal after hardship and perilous journeys - as among Shakespeare’s best work. Come and explore for yourself. A great opportunity to do some practical acting work with some of Shakespeare’s lesser known pieces. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SINGING
with Janette Davies Wed 8 Feb, 7.00pm - 9.30pm, £15.00 The session will be carried out in a relaxed fun atmosphere and is intended to encourage people to enjoy singing and discover their hidden talents. Included in the workshop will be lessons in how to get the most from your voice, exercises to develop your voice and an opportunity for singing as part of a group. The session will be run by Janette Davies AGSM, a local singing teacher who studied at The Guildhall School of Music and Royal Northern College of Music. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MIME
with Tom Jackson Sat 11 Feb, 10.00am - 5.00pm, £25.00 Ever wondered how mime artists create those visual illusions so convincingly? Ever fancied trying yourself? Here’s a workshop devoted solely to the skills of mime technique; fixed point, tac, body echo, stage movement and more! No prior skills are needed just an enthusiasm to learn. The workshop will be structured from the basics through to the more challenging aspects of creating a mime, either solo or group piece. It’s fun, but not difficult, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you pick it up. The workshop will be taught by Tom Jackson, who has over 20 years of experience in teaching and performing mime, and has been involved with Riding Lights as a workshop facilitator for Riding Lights Youth Theatre over the past three years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THEATRE GAMES
with Paul Birch Wed 15 Feb, 7.00pm - 9.30pm, £15.00 Are you an actor who wants to improve their improvisation skills, a director who needs ‘another way in’ to help their cast perform more effectively or perhaps a drama teacher who would like some more practical resources? If so, this workshop is an opportunity to learn a host of games and exercises that will develop performance skills such as imagination, focus, ensemble, energy and physicality, using amongst others, techniques developed by Augusto Boal and Keith Johnstone. It will also look at the best ways in which games and exercises can be set up and delivered for maximum affect. A fun packed evening crammed with play that will take you to the next level. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRECHT
with Bridget Foreman Sat 1 Apr, 10.00am - 5.00pm, £25.00 The Good Playwright of Berlin How can the theatre be entertaining and at the same time instructive?, asked Bertolt Brecht in 1939. His plays are an answer to that question - at times riotously entertaining, at others profoundly instructive. This workshop will draw on extracts from Brecht’s greatest as well as his less-known plays, exploring the dramatic techniques of the man who was arguably the most influential playwright of the 20th century, and the father of modern political theatre. A fun, practical workshop for anyone who likes their theatre with a little more bite... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACTING FROM TEXT
with David Gann Sat 8 Apr, 10.00am - 5.00pm, £25.00 ‘Words are both the trigger and the product, and yet they are nothing without the process they engender.’ If you have attended David’s previous workshops on Text Alive and Stanislavsky, you will know that as a fully trained actor, theatre director and teacher one of his passions is exploring the dramatic potential of the spoken word. In this full day of work he will take you through a series of very practical exercises that will through a light on the power of words, yet never out of context from the art of acting, and the power of communication. Touching on Shakespeare, Pinter and other more naturalistic texts you should feel that the day has explored the very heart of acting.
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February 2006: FRIARGATE POETRY: PETER ROBINSON
A Production from Riding Lights / Shoestring Press
Ghost characters are names that appear in the dramatis personae of old texts and manuscripts of plays, but then don’t show up in the play itself. Peter Robinson’s new book employs the phrase more than once, with word play on Chinese written characters and on colloquial senses of both words. The poet’s sixth collection is about being haunted by memories of people no longer in our dramas. In another piece of word play, the poetry both exercises and exorcises these recurrent visitors from the past. Peter Robinson was born in 1953 in the North of England. Since 1989 he has taught English literature in Japan, at present in Kyoto, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters.
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February 2006: FLIGHT CASES
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Take off on a journey of breath-taking views, exhilarating experiences, and horizons wider than you imagined… Ditch your excess baggage, hitch up your flight-socks and fasten your seatbelt for the trip of your life, taking in the strangest and the most familiar places. Flight Cases is an elevating collection of stories - moving, challenging and hilarious - an energetic blend of theatre and story-telling; a fast, fun and furious ride through tales that will challenge, delight and surprise you. Their themes will take you to the heart of human and spiritual issues, questioning what makes us valuable and asking what difference faith makes as we journey through life and beyond. The show is suitable for most age-groups, and is a great discussion-starter.
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March 2006: A LAUGHING MATTER
A Production from York Settlement Community Players
York's premier amateur theatre company go behind the scenes with April de Angelis' hilarious comedy. It's 1773 at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The crowd is getting restless. The leading man's unconscious. But the show must go on. Do you give them what they want? Or what they need? This irreverent version of real life events tells the story of David Garrick, Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and a risky new play called She Stoops to Conquer.
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March 2006: THE MIRACLE
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
In a town which could be your town, something strange has happened. After the rain, the canal breaks its banks, a lot of debris gets shifted and when a holy statue bursts up through the floor of 12 year old Veronica Sheehan’s bedroom, no one is more surprised than she is... With the enthusiastic support of best friend Zelda, she sets about using her new found skills to help their ailing community. The young people of the town tell us the story in their own words, showing us their parents, teachers, friends and enemies, as an entire population finds itself hungering unknowingly for something magical to come into their lives. When the story reaches its dramatic conclusion only Ron will have the power to turn things round and change a life for the better, but will she have the courage to do it?
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April 2006: IMAGINEERS
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
When the news breaks that Balmytown has taken the ‘Most Fluffy and Cosy Town of the Year Award’ for the tenth year running, and that a mysterious benefactor has built an art gallery and a hospital right in the city centre overnight (after the last hospital was mysteriously stolen), why is Dr Morris - the local art historian - so keen for everyone to visit this remarkable gallery? Is there any link between the new buildings and the mysterious deaths of so many of the residents’ pet gerbils? And can a plot to ransack the art gallery be averted? Imagineers is a script using material devised by the Junior Youth Theatre and written by Paul Birch.
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April 2006: THE LONG MIRROR
A Production from Northern Lights Theatre Company
The Long Mirror is a love triangle set in Wales in 1940. Michael Camber has to choose between his wife Valerie and Branwen Elder, a woman whom he has never met but who has a strange hold over him.
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April 2006: A YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY
A Production from Icabod Productions
This tale "not so new as lamentable and true" tells the true story of Walter Calverley, and how in 1605, spiralling debt, alcoholism, and despair drove him to murder his family. Originally produced to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Calverley murders, Icabod present their new exploration of this Jacobean domestic tragedy that has unmistakable contemporary connotations. The piece draws on local and national history, folklore, traditions and documented historical records which reveal the subsequent trial and brutal execution of Walter Calverley. A Yorkshire Tragedy is an exciting, intense and visceral piece of theatre, which should provoke debate and discussion amongst its audience. "Terrific performances... a tight gripping production."
Bradford Telegraph and Argus
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June 2006: CELEBRATION
A Production from Dringhouses Dramatic Society
One Wedding and a Funeral: “Did we choose the right caterer?” This is the question which plagues many a bride’s family, and critical remarks from the groom’s relations don’t exactly help. And then there’s the cars, the photographer, the seating arrangements… Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s 1961 comedy "Celebration” tackles these issues fearlessly. And six months later, the bride’s great-uncle dies. When the family gathers after the burial, they’re confronted by the deceased’s live-in (and uninvited) girlfriend. Sit back and watch the sparks fly. Set “somewhere in the North of England”, this promises to be a cracking evening’s entertainment.
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July 2006: THE CHAMPION OF PARIBANOU
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
“Then lose for me. I can make you rich, I can give you power, I can make you happy… anyone who stands in our way. We can crush them.” An exciting story of quests and adventures and things that don’t go according to plan. Sometimes heroes don’t want to succeed and sometimes princesses don’t want to get married and sometimes things are not everything they seem. Three brothers, a dark magician, an invisible palace and the cleverest of servants all combine in this frenetic comic adventure by one of England’s most successful and prolific playwrights. This production is by Riding Lights Youth Theatre's Junior Group, aged 11-14.
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August 2006: MUSIC & DRAMA PROJECT FOR AGES 9-14
A Production from Riding Lights / National Centre for Early Music
Are you ready to open The Box of Delights? In just one week, learn and perform a new musical play based on John Masefield's acclaimed story The Box of Delights. Experience the story of schoolboy Kay Harker as he is entrusted to keep a magic box safe from the clutches of the evil Abner Brown who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Using its power Kay and his friends enter strange and mysterious worlds filled with villainous gangsters, kidnapped choristers and the mysterious Punch and Judy man. But be careful... the wolves are running. You do not need to have any experience of music or drama to take part in this project - just lots of commitment and enthusiasm. The course begins on Monday 14th August and ends with a performance at the National Centre for Early Music on Friday 18th August at 7.00pm. Rehearsals take place everyday at the NCEM from 10.00am until 4.00pm. Please bring a packed lunch and a drink, and wear comfortable clothes and shoes.
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September 2006: RED HOT & COLE
A Production from York Light Opera Company
Red Hot & Cole bubbles with songs that have become international standards, from such classic shows and movies as Anything Goes, Kiss Me Kate, High Society and Can-Can among others. It traces Porter's life from his childhood in Indiana to the stages and penthouses of New York, London, Paris and Venice. It's a champagne tribute to a glittering age gone by, and the man and talent who was Cole Porter.
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September 2006: PIPE DREAMS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
UNTAPPING THE TRUTH ABOUT WATER Everything’s hotting up at Private Investigators Inc. Water’s down to a trickle. Chief’s turning up the heat on a pile of stagnant cases, Fox is making Sparky’s temperature rise and the whole team’s clinging to the water-cooler for more than a drop of inspiration. Our hard-boiled detectives can’t find the link between a series of mysterious crimes from Detroit to Rajasthan… until they stumble on the files of a certain Dr. Snow. Could his detective work in the sewers of Victorian London provide the clue to unblock their brains? PIPE DREAMS is the hilarious, globe-trotting whodunnit about what’s going on with our water, unmasking a villain rather closer to home than we might like to admit. PIPE DREAMS re-connects the water rich with the water poor. _______________________
Riding Lights Theatre Company is touring PIPE DREAMS in association with WaterAid, the UK’s major charity dedicated to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the poorest people in the world. 2006 is WaterAid’s 25th anniversary. www.wateraid.org
Many of the venues hosting performances of PIPE DREAMS are churches concerned with an ongoing commitment to justice, tying the show in to harvest events and fair-trade work. The tour will equip the communities of each venue to make a practical contribution to the international work of WaterAid.
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September 2006: FRIARGATE POETRY: HOPE AFTER THE TSUNAMI
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
On Boxing Day 2004, York’s Stephen Magson was killed by the Asian Tsunami on the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi. His daughter and his wife, Denise, survived and, on their return to the UK, founded the Stephen Magson Memorial Trust. All money from ticket sales to this event will go directly to the Trust, to help the people of Kho Phi Phi to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. The Trust also works to maintain strong links with the people in the area where Steve lost his life, to encourage and reward Steve’s field of interests back home in York and to keep alive Steve’s memory by raising funds in his name. ----------------------- NIGEL FORDE
Nigel Forde, born in Leeds, began his career as an actor at York Theatre Royal, then co-founded Riding Lights Theatre Company in 1977. He has been a contributor to BBC radio and is best known for presenting Radio 4’s Bookshelf. He has also written screenplays, one of which was nominated for a BAFTA and won an EMMY. He has published eight books to date including A Map of the Territory (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2003), Teaching the Wind Plurals (Robson) and A Motley Wisdom: The Best of G.K. Chesterton (Hodder). 'Nigel Forde is a natural poet. There’s no sense of striving after effect. It’s obvious that both experience and thought make their impact on him in a rich mixture of imagery, rhythm and structure that enables them to be carried to us effortlessly.'
Arnold Wesker
PETE MORGAN
In 1971 a selection of Pete Morgan’s work was published by Faber & Faber. His full-length collections include The Grey Mare Being The Better Steed (1973), The Spring Collection (1979), One Greek Alphabet (1980) and A Winter Visitor (1983), all from Secker & Warburg. His latest, August Light, was published by Arc in 2005.
His poems have been set to music and recorded by numerous artists including Al Stewart, The McCalmans and most recently The Levellers. In performance Morgan has few rivals. His command of his craft and his extraordinary delivery transfix his audience. "The first lines of his poems seem to set off a chain of hidden explosions within him. He twitches. He sways. He stomps. He burns. He looks genuinely relieved and exhausted when it is all over, like a man who has climbed an emotional mountain." 'Morgan is not a prolific poet, and more’s the pity, for he is one of the best social poets writing in this country...'
Martin Booth, Tribune 'There are famous poets of my generation and younger who have no idea of the debt they owe to Pete Morgan. His poems are dramatic, formally superb, funny, toughly tender, lyrical and never less than entertaining. Ted Hughes was a fan of his.'
Carol Ann Duffy
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October 2006: THE YORK REALIST
A Production from York Settlement Players
Friargate Theatre welcomes back York's premier amateur theatre company. It’s 1963 in a farming village a few miles outside York. There are cattle to feed, new hedges needed… and a kitchen range to remove. But for farm labourer George, acting in a local production of the York Mystery Plays, the opportunity of a new life in swinging London comes knocking on the door. The York Realist is a bitter sweet love story set amidst a family searching for new horizons. For George it’s a case of what comes first; Art? Love? True companionship? Or home, an ailing mother and life under the open skies? Three months after their production of the Last Judgement in this year’s Mystery Play Cycle, York Settlement Players present the Yorkshire premiere of Peter Gill’s award winning play, first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 2002.
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October 2006: POETRY DOUBLES
A Production from Riding Lights
Poetry Doubles is a series of readings at York’s Friargate Theatre, each featuring an established poet and his or her own choice of a second poet - an exciting, emerging talent - to present some of our most influential and our most promising new writers side by side. ________________________________ GILLIAN CLARKE “Gillian Clarke’s poems ring with lucidity and power...her work is personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.” Times Literary Supplement Gillian Clarke is a broadcaster, freelance writer and lecturer; she edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to 1984, and latterly has been a teacher of creative writing in primary and secondary schools. Carcanet have published her Selected Poems (1985), Letting in the Rumour (1989, Poetry Book Society Recommendation), The King of Britain’s Daughter (1993), Collected Poems (1997), Five Fields (1998) and Making the Beds for the Dead (2004). Born in Cardiff, she is a poet, playwright, editor and translator (from Welsh), and President of Ty Newydd, the writers´ centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Her poetry is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain.
IMTIAZ DHARKER
Born in Pakistan, Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow and eloped with a Hindu Indian to live in Bombay. She is now making a new life between India, London and Wales. She is an accomplished artist and documentary film-maker, and her books - Postcards from god (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001) and The terrorist at my table (2006), all published by Bloodaxe - include her own drawings. ________________________________ “I’m a strong supporter of the idea that writers who have been around for a long time and who are in a position to ‘help’ other writers, if that’s the right word, should do so. The premise of Poetry Doubles is a very good one.”
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate Poetry Doubles has been named a POETRY LANDMARK by the Poetry Society.
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November 2006: SCRUB THAT MANGER!
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Hannah’s got her work cut out. The family B&B is overflowing with tourists, and where there are guests there’s mess. Suddenly a young couple turn up out of the blue with a very unusual load, and Hannah discovers why one small bundle of joy can sometimes lead to a whole bundle of trouble… So what’s Hannah’s mum got against that lovely young shepherd chap? Will the real story in the midst of the chaos get swept under the carpet? And can remembering the words ‘Blue for the loo’ really be good for your teeth? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas in Scrub That Manger!
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November 2006: FRIARGATE POETRY
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
MATTHEW HOLLIS was born in Norwich in 1971. Ground Water (Bloodaxe 2004), his first full-length collection, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, the Guardian First Book Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He published a pamphlet, The Boy on the Edge of Happiness, with Smith/Doorstop in 1996 and won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999. He is co-editor of 101 Poems Against War (Faber, 2003) and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2000), and works as an editor at Faber and Faber. Ground Water: Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Independent, Independent on Sunday and Spectator Books of the Year 2004 recommendation. 'Hollis writes a knowing, lyrical poetry set against a landscape of big skies and battened-down horizons. He combines worldly wisdom with more detailed, vernacular understanding to produce poems that speak with a sense of purpose and place'
Simon Armitage www.matthewhollis.com ---------------------------------------------- ANTONY DUNN was born in London in 1973. He won the Newdigate Prize in 1995 and received a Society of Authors' Eric Gregory Award in 2000. He has published two collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford Poets 1998) and Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2002) and he is working towards completion of a third, Bugs. Antony Dunn is Poet in Residence at the University of York for 2006, and is a tutor for The Poetry School in York. 'An often unique voice… subtle, thought-provoking and enormously readable'
Poetry Review www.antonydunn.org ---------------------------------------------- Matthew Hollis and Antony Dunn have toured the UK, Hungary and Croatia with First Lines, a group of five young British poets.
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December 2006: KING JOHN
A Production from York Shakespeare Project
One of England’s most unpopular sovereigns, King John will be getting a makeover this Autumn, when the York Shakespeare Project return to Friargate Theatre with their ninth production. John, most often remembered for the Magna Carta, or as a baddie in the tales of Robin Hood, will be seen in this play battling over a disputed crown, with an overbearing mother, and with lots of arguing siblings. It just proves to show that even Kings have bad days. Director Jeremy Muldowney has set it in medieval times, when existence was literally a matter of life and death, and this is illustrated in the play. Says Jeremy, ‘It did not matter where you were on the ladder of power, whether a serf or a king, life would be very uncertain. In those days, news was not spread as quickly as it is today via the internet; most people would not have realised who their king was, or what he looked like, least of all whether he was agreeing with the Pope or not.' Another of history's characters who makes an appearance is John's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was considered one of the most beautiful and clever women in medieval Europe. She is played by Jenny Carr, who teaches Drama at Canon Lee School in York. Jenny says of Eleanor, ‘The trouble is that as a woman, she is incredibly clever and intelligent, in a time where women were seen to have no say in day to day life. In fact, she’s surrounded by men, and she knows she could do a better job of ruling England than any of them. Richard had been the apple of her eye, and she thinks that John is too weak for the crown. There’s certainly no love lost between them both.’
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December 2006: THE VISIT
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
“I wish to buy justice!”
“But justice cannot be bought, madam.”
“Everything can be bought.” When Claire Zachanasian returns to the debt-ridden town of Güllen, years after being disgraced and expelled, she is rich beyond the town’s wildest imaginings. So her offer to clear their debts is quite an attractive one. But there is one condition: she wants the life of the man responsible for her expulsion. Of course, no one’s going to agree to that, are they? The Visit is a thrilling black comedy, performed by the Riding Lights' Senior Youth Theatre, aged 14-19.
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January 2007: RUMOURS
A Production from DRINGHOUSES DRAMATIC SOCIETY
Scandal! Four couples are invited to dinner with a Government Minister. He is found semi-conscious and seems to have attempted suicide. His wife is nowhere to be seen. But there have been rumours going round the tennis club! Has he been having an affair which his wife has discovered? Or has she been unfaithful? The attempts by the guests to cover up the situation and to get help (in that order) form the plot of Neil Simon's riotously funny farce, Rumours. Dringhouses Dramatic Society is one of York's most popular amateur dramatic societies, making a welcome return to Friargate Theatre.
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January 2007: FIVE THEATRE WORKSHOPS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
IMPROVISATION - with Lizi Patch Suitable for beginners and more seasoned performers, this session will help you develop simple and effective techniques for encouraging spontaneity and originality. What makes a successful improviser? Technique, that’s what! Everyone can learn the art of successful improvisation and these skills are right at the heart of being a good performer. Work on games and exercises which will enable you to unlock your imagination, trust your judgement and enjoy creating original material in a fun and supportive environment. Lizi Patch is Artistic Director of Raised Eyebrow Theatre Company (based in Scarborough). She also runs the weekly Raised Eyebrow Youth Theatre in Pickering and, as part of C&T Theatre Company, is resident Drama Animateur at Woldgate College of Performing Arts, Pocklington. ------------------- COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE - with Crystal Millard Discover the origins of Commedia dell’arte as a popular theatrical form & experience Commedia performance techniques through improvising stock characters which cover: name, costume, stance, gestures, relationships, status, mask type, walks, speech, plot function, origin, props, movements, characteristics. Sample dialogues & monologues from this popular improvised form of comedy which dominated European popular culture for three centuries. Crystal Millard is an actress, drama practitioner & teacher. She trained at the Central School of Speech & Drama and works in theatre, TV and education. Recent TV work includes BBC’s Byker Grove, and theatre work as a producer of new writing for young people for the National Theatre Shell Connections festival. She lives in York. ------------------- VOICE - with Margaret Hillier Our voice is one of our most precious assets. Through a fun programme of games and exercises learn how to develop your vocal potential and protect your voice allowing you to communicate and perform effectively. Margaret Hillier trained at Guildford School of Acting and has a B.Ed. in drama from the University of Toronto. She teaches drama at Bootham School and is a freelance voice coach. ------------------- MASK - with Paul Birch This is an introduction to mask work looking at acting technique, physicality and creating character. Participants will also explore ways of improvising scenes based on their own devised Full Mask characters and discover how to sustain this most physical style of performance. Using techniques practised by Keith Johnston and Trestle the workshop will also tap into other skills such as Mime, Improvisation and visual comedy. Paul Birch trained as an actor at Bretton Hall graduating in Theatre Arts. He is currently the Education Officer for Riding Lights Theatre Company and has directed over ten Youth Theatre productions for them. These include Goldoni’s The Venetian Twins using half masks, and the current devised show Masquerade with full masks. He has won two playwriting residences at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and recently completed a Masters degree in Writing and Performance at York University. ------------------- SINGING - with Janette Davies The session will be carried out in a relaxed fun atmosphere and is intended to encourage people to enjoy singing and discover their hidden talents. Included in the workshop will be lessons in how to get the most from your voice, exercises to develop your voice and an opportunity for singing as part of a group. The session will also include a masterclass on solo performance. The session will be run by Janette Davies AGSM a local singing teacher who studied at The Guildhall School of Music and Royal Northern College of Music.
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February 2007: FLIGHT CASES
A Riding Lights Roughshod Theatre Company Production
Ditch your excess baggage, hitch up your flight-socks and take off on a journey of breath-taking views, exhilarating experiences, and horizons wider than you imagined… Flight Cases is an elevating collection of stories - moving, challenging and hilarious - an energetic blend of theatre and story-telling. It's a fast, fun and furious ride through tales that will challenge, delight and surprise you, from the cast's own personal stories, through fables and folklore to true stories such as that of Harriet Tubman, the black slave who led thousands to freedom along the 'Underground Railroad' in 19th century USA. Their themes will take you to the heart of human and spiritual issues, questioning what makes us valuable and asking what difference faith makes as we journey through life and beyond. The show is suitable for ages 11 and upwards, and is a great discussion-starter.
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March 2007: CALVARY
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Riding Lights Theatre Company is invited each year to perform a passion play as the centrepiece of the Good Friday service in the nave of York Minster. This occasion, at the heart of our preparation for Easter, has provided a moving combination of powerful theatre, meditation, prayer and corporate worship. Following the huge success of Nigel Forde’s The Passion (2003 and 2004) and the last two years' tours of Bridget Foreman’s new passion play, Calvary will tour again in 2006. The play starts and ends at the cross. Above us, Christ hangs crucified. At his feet we gather, shoulder to shoulder with those who knew him. As they witness his suffering, their stories, told in flashback and dramatic re-creation, speak of their own suffering and the mercy they found at his hands. The script is divided into six episodes to create space for other expressions of worship and reflection arising directly out of the drama. These additional elements have been created in collaboration with The Reverend Jeremy Fletcher, Canon Precentor of York Minster, and will be read by readers and musicians from each community hosting the performance. The whole presentation becomes a powerful act of remembrance which is both participatory and reflective. Threaded with moments of great joy and celebration, robustly and full-bloodedly performed, Calvary uncovers a deep connection between the audience’s ordinary and extraordinary sufferings and the crucifixion of Christ.
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March 2007: FRIARGATE POETRY: VOICES OF YORK
A Production from Riding Lights and The Poetry School
These five poets have all participated in courses run by The Poetry School in York. Some already well-known to readers of poety in York and nationwide, some emerging voices, this is a group of distinctive, compelling writers presenting the very best of their poetry, live. CAROLE BROMLEY
Carole Bromley teaches creative writing for York University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning. A 2004 winner in the Poetry Business Competition, she has performed at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. In 2005 she won The Bridport Prize and in 2006 was commended in the Arvon Competition. Carole’s work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, most recently in Images of Women (Arrowhead 2006) and in the next Poetry School anthology (Enitharmon 2007). LYDIA HARRIS
Lydia Harris was born in 1951 and grew up in North Staffordshire. Although she is now retired and settled in the East Riding, she taught English for most of her working life at The Mount School, York. YVIE HOLDER
Yvie Holder was born in 1955 and has spent most of her life in Yorkshire. Formerly an English teacher, she now works at the University of York and has been re-developing her interest in writing poetry at the Poetry School seminars. NIGEL SMITH
Nigel has recently retired from teaching. After 28 years hard slog he has decided that it is time that he devoted himself to other things: things that really interest him, the principal one being writing poetry. He has been attending classes with the poetry school for two years although he has written poems on and off throughout his life. JONATHAN TAYLOR
Jonathan Taylor’s poetry has appeared in magazines and periodicals in the UK and US and he has given poetry readings from Edinburgh to Brighton. He is a former winner of the TLS/Cheltenham Literature Festival Poetry Prize. A teacher of English in state and independent schools for thirty years, he was appointed Head of Bootham School, York, in 2004.
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March 2007: LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES
A Production from York Settlement Community Players
Two decadent French aristocrats plan to corrupt two innocent women - for pleasure and revenge. But playing with one's deepest emotions means the
results can never be forseen. Christopher Hampton's witty adaptation provides a sparkling comedy with an edge of darkness. Friargate Theatre is delighted to welcome back York's premier amateur theatre company.
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March 2007: AFRICAN SNOW
A Production from York Theatre Royal & Riding Lights Theatre Company
The Story African Snow is the meeting of two men – cast from opposite sides into the hell of the slave trade. The English sailor, John Newton, is well-known as the converted slave-trader who gave the world its most famous hymn Amazing Grace. But, as one might expect from the quiet racism of the history books, less prominence is given to Olaudah Equiano, whose extraordinary story has been confined to a footnote or totally ignored. Equiano’s ascent from the hell of a slave ship to become the leading black voice in the British abolition campaign is one of the most compelling and moving stories of any era. Both men survived to write remarkable accounts of their experiences and were urged by Yorkshire MP William Wilberforce to testify before parliament in the eighteenth century campaign for abolition. Together, Equiano and Newton seem to provide the most cogent argument in winning the political battle. Is bringing them face to face beyond the scope of human reason? Can victim and abuser ever be reconciled? African Snow takes us to the heart of the human condition, to the place where two men are compelled to confront one another. Why Perform This Play Now? March 25 2007 marks the bicentenary of the Act, passed in the House of Commons, abolishing the Trade in African Slaves. But 1807 was one victory in a battle that has intensified. In 1807 there were 4 million slaves worldwide… today there are over 20 million. The Production Team Behind African Snow African Snow is the first co-production between York theatre companies Riding Lights and York Theatre Royal. African Snow was originally commissioned and is supported by the Church Mission Society, founded in 1799 by representatives of the abolitionist movement including William Wilberforce. Why Should You Watch African Snow? “Here’s a play that turns history into a pulsating human story. It could be yours. It could be mine. We begin to understand the past when we recognise that it is about real human beings like us. That way we better understand not only where we have come from but what we are doing now and where we are heading.”
Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York
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March 2007: SPEAK UP
A Production from The Poetry School in York
Explore new ways of speaking poetry. Whether you're performing your own poems in a pub, or Shakespeare in the open air, Speak Up will equip you will skills and techniques to make the most of - and care for - your own voice. Each one-day Speak Up workshop will be led by a professional poet, actor or voice-coach. Speak Up will take place on Saturdays in March, April, May & June 2007. Workshops last from 10.30am until 4.30pm, with an hour for lunch. Participants are very welcome to attend as many of these sessions as they wish. ----------------------- SUSAN STERN trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She works as an acting teacher, theatre director (West Yorkshire Playhouse, York Theatre Royal) and voice coach. Susan is Director of Voiceworks, a general voice consultancy, and writes for BBC radio drama. NIGEL FORDE is a poet, actor, broadcaster and playwright. He was, for many years, the voice of BBC Radio 4's Bookshelf, and his most recent collection of poems is A Map of the Territory (Carcanet Oxford Poets). In 2005 he toured nationwide in The Winter's Tale for Riding Lights Theatre Company, of which he is a founder-member. BRIDGET FOREMAN is a theatre director and playwright. She has been Artistic Director of Manchester Youth Theatre and is currently an Artistic Associate of Riding Lights Theatre Company. MARK PAYTON has had many years of experience as an actor, Drama teacher and English teacher, and has recently run a very successful series of workshops on voice, verse-speaking and Shakespeare in performance. PETE MORGAN is a member of the Arvon Foundation Council, for which he has also run very many poetry courses. He has held a number of creative writing appointments, including Arts Council Fellow in Poetry at the University of Loughborough. His latest collection of poems is August Light (Arc 2006).
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August 2007: A MUSICAL PLAY IN A WEEK
A Production from Riding Lights / National Centre for Early Music
In just one week learn and perform a new musical play based on thrilling tales from Arabian Nights. Join us for a quest filled with danger, mystery, adventure and wisdom. Encounter strange sights and magical worlds as you act out the memorable characters from these timeless stories. You do not need to have any experience of music or drama to take part in this project - just lots of commitment and enthusiasm. The course begins on Monday 13 August and ends with a performance at Friargate Theatre on Friday 17 August at 7.00pm Rehearsals take place daily at the NCEM from 10.00am until 4.00pm.
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October 2007: GIRL AND DEAN
A Production from www.girlanddean.co.uk
Bar open from 7.30pm and after the show
All Tickets £10 (includes one complimentary glass of wine, beer or a soft drink) Riding Lights Theatre Company is currently engaged in a major project working alongside and in support of the Palestinian christian community. This project which began in 2006 has several stages all of which aim to build relationships, create opportunities and increase awareness of the issues facing Palestinians living within the walls of the occupied territories. In addition to leading theatre workshops in Bethlehem and touring a major new play Salaam Bethlehem around the UK this autumn, Riding Lights has committed itself to raising the money to enable a group of teenage drama students from Bethlehem and their teacher to attend our Summer Theatre School in 2008. This hilarious evening with GIRL AND DEAN is the second of a series of events which aim to raise £5,000 to make this possible. Once immediate expenses have been met, the lion’s share of box-office and bar income will go towards this fund. A full house at Friargate Theatre will ensure that we raise another big chunk of that total!
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October 2007: SALAAM BETHLEHEM
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
For the past 18 months we have been making steady progress towards a new play for the season of Advent running right up to Christmas 2007. A play with undertones for all our Christmases, Bridget Foreman's SALAAM BETHLEHEM is set in the 'little town' today where the streets are definitely darker beneath the concrete slabs but where the everlasting light still shines. In May last year we met some of the dwindling Palestinian Christian community, discovering a remarkable range of people whose simple message to Riding Lights was 'Pray for us, tell our story, visit us.' Before anyone jumps to conclusions and because (both inside and outside the Church) issues to do with Israel seem to be so contentious... this is not a 'political' play... or it is only political insofar as anything that deals with people is naturally political. We are not colouring in a new roadmap for the Middle East peace process. We are seeking to stand alongside brothers and sisters in the church of Christ. And how grateful all of us should be that they are still there.
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November 2007: FIVE THEATRE WORKSHOPS FOR ADULTS
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Puppetry - with Kelvin Goodspeed
Tue 6 Nov, 7.00pm - 9.30pm, Friargate Theatre
£15.00////
Quick to capture the imagination of young and old alike, puppetry and live animation remain an engaging, entertaining and often powerful medium for theatre and storytelling. And yet, however good your puppets might be, they do need a lot of help from human hands…This session works both as a very hands-on introduction to puppetry for those who have never picked up a puppet before, and as an opportunity for those who have to extend and refine their skills. Just come and play! Kelvin Goodspeed has worked as an actor/puppeteer with Norwich Puppet Theatre, Custard Factory Theatre Company and Riding Lights. IMPROVISATION - with Lizi Patch
Fri 9 Nov, 7.00pm - 9.30pm, Friargate Theatre
£15.00
Suitable for beginners and more seasoned performers, this session will help you develop simple and effective techniques for encouraging spontaneity and originality. What makes a successful improvisation? Technique, that's what! Everyone can learn the art of successful improvisation and these skills are right at the heart of being a good performer. Work on games and exercises will enable you to unlock your imagination, trust your judgement and enjoy creating original material in a fun and supportive environment. This session will be run by Lizi Patch, Artistic Director of Raised Eyebrow Theatre Company. Lizi also runs the weekly Raised Eyebrow Youth Theatre in Pickering and, as part of C&T Theatre Company, is resident Drama Animateur at Woldgate College of Performing Arts, Pocklington.
Stanislavski - with Crystal Millard
Sat 17 Nov, 10.00am - 4.00pm, Friargate Theatre
£30.00
This workshop introduces some of Stanislavski's approaches to acting, which lead us through a series of steps from his 'system' to enable us to move towards a true creative state on stage. We start with Centering & Intention and move to exploring Focus & Changing Focus, Creativity, Imagining & Observing, Given Circumstances, Playing a Character, Engaging with the Play, Tempo Rhythym and The 'As If'. Crystal Millard is an Actor, Drama Practitioner & Teacher. She trained at The Central School of Speech & Drama and also worked there as a Drama Tutor after graduating. She has worked as an actor in both TV and Theatre and was also the North East regional producer for The National Theatre Shell Connections Festival of Youth Theatre and New Writing in 2005. She currently teaches A Level Drama & Theatre Studies at York College.
MIME - with Tom Jackson
Tue 27 Nov, 7.00pm - 9.30pm, Friargate Theatre
£15.00
Ever wondered how mime artists create those visual illusions so convincingly? Ever fancied trying yourself? Here's a workshop devoted solely to the skills of mime technique; fixed point, tac, body echo, stage movement and more! No prior skills are needed, just an enthusiasm to learn. The workshop will be structured from the basics through to the more challenging aspects of creating a mime, either solo or group piece. It's fun, but not difficult and you'll be amazed at how quickly you pick it up. The workshop will be taught by Tom Jackson, who has over 20 years of experience in teaching and performing mime, and has been involved with Riding Lights as a workshop facilitator for Riding Lights Youth Theatre over the past four years. THE DIRECTOR AND THE ACTOR - with David Gann
Sat 1 Dec, 10.00am - 4.00pm, Friargate Theatre
£30.00
Come and explore some elements that inform how a director works. You will sometimes be actor and sometimes director, in order to explore the purpose of the director and how much the actor is either energised and enabled or creatively robbed and constrained by the director in the rehearsal process. This promises to be both fun and informative, and should help both budding and experienced directors to consider their art. Similarly it will also encourage actors to reflect on the rehearsal dynamic. The workshop will be accessible for a broad range of experience of either actor or director, and includes those that just want to discover a bit more about the theatre game.
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November 2007: GOOSE CHASE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
In the depths of a Russian winter, what on earth could make frail old Baboushka cross hundreds of miles of snow on foot? And why is she armed only with a feather duster and a set of Russian dolls? The situation’s tense. The birth of a harmless baby’s got the king in a really foul temper. There’s trouble brewing in the shape of Igor, oppressed singer and stablehand. And the closer Baboushka gets to the end of her mission, the more it seems the only person she can trust is, well, a goose... because not everyone in the race to find the baby is bringing gifts... Goose Chase is a startling reworking of the famous Russian folk story, served up richly spiced with traditional songs and carols. Riding Lights tells the tale with a characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses into the heart of the first Christmas.
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December 2007: NEVERWHERE
A Production from Riding Lights Youth Theatre
Riding Lights Youth Theatre will present the U.K Stage Premiere of Neil Gai man's Neverwhere*. Acclaimed cult writer, Neil Gaiman (whose work can currently be seen on our cinema screens with Stardust and the upcoming Beowulf) has given Riding Lights Education Officer, Paul Birch, permission to adapt and stage his 1996 Novel. Riding Lights Youth Theatre will present the first U.K stage production this December.
The novel, which originally began its life as a BBC television series, follows the unwitting adventures of Richard Oliver Mayhew, who lives and works in London Above. A place where everything is normal and everything is safe. After helping the bloody figure of a wounded girl he falls into the terrifying world of London Below. Amidst a hidden city of saints, angels, monsters and murderers he will become embroiled in a plot that aims to shake Heaven itself. The production will take a dynamic approach to creating the weird and wonderful world of London Below. Using Physical Theatre techniques, the 32 strong cast aim to bring to life an ever-changing landscape filled with trials and terrors of every kind. *Based on Neverwhere © Copyright 1996 by Neil Gaiman.
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January 2008: THREE MEN IN A BOAT
A Production from York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company
York Theatre Royal and Riding Lights Theatre Company present Jerome k. Jerome's Ever been on a disastrous summer holiday? Three Men in a Boat will make yours seem like a honeymoon picnic. Jerome’s classic comedy comes roaring to life in a delightfully accident-packed evening as three men take a boat trip up the Thames in 1889. Through a series of hilarious mishaps and ineptitudes, a healthy rest-cure on the river goes badly adrift. Splendidly adapted from what is arguably the funniest book in English literature, the renowned trio of ‘young fogies’, Jerome, Harris and George, give you a comic cavalcade of escapist diversions – everything from the affair of the strong cheese on a crowded train to Harris’s farcical attempts to sing a comic song at a polite dinner party. An ingenious production, with a masterpiece of a boat. A brilliant evening for everyone in the holiday mood – shot though with classic music hall songs from the Victorian period. ‘A riverful of good jokes – tickled out like fat trout with stealth and skill’.
The Guardian ‘A jolly romp… the audience floats along in a haze of contentment.’
The Stage ‘A triumph’
The Jerome K Jerome Society
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February 2008: LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME
A Production from DRINGHOUSES DRAMATIC SOCIETY
This improbable comedy tells the story of Lord Arthur who has his palm read by Podgers, who tells him he will commit a murder. Lord Arthur feels duty bound to get it over with before his marriage to Sybil. Aided by the anarchist Winkelkopf his attempts prove futile but it emerges Podgers is a charlatan and Lord Arthur is free. But on the way to the wedding rehearsal he finds the carriage contains Winkelhopf's newest bomb...
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March 2008: REDEMPTION SONG
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
A moving combination of powerful theatre, meditation, prayer and corporate worship. The play starts and ends at the cross – that savage, unlooked for place which more than any other reveals the true identity of Jesus Christ. Full of vividly drawn characters from the gospels, Les Ellison’s new play gives many illuminating insights which take us under the skin of the passion story. Whether poor or powerful, privileged or dispossessed, no one walks away untouched by an encounter with the one life which constantly provokes the question: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ The script is divided into six episodes to create space for other expressions of worship, music and reflection arising directly out of the drama. The whole presentation becomes a powerful act of remembrance which is both participatory and reflective. Shot through with moments of great joy and great conflict, robustly and compellingly performed, Redemption Song asks each of us to review our understanding of our own faith in the searing bright light of the crucifixion of Christ.
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March 2008: WEALTH
A Production from ICABOD Theatre Company
Contains strong language and material which may offend Chremylus has a question…..Why be poor but honest when crime always seems to pay…..? The God of Wealth , blinded by Zeus to spite mortals, cannot see who truly deserves his gift….but what if his sight was restored…? Icabod bring their own inimitable style and energy to this rare comedy by Aristophanes. Newly adapted by Mark France, it wickedly satirises society’s obsession with money, status and consumption. Corruption, crime, poverty and the exploitation of others in the pursuit of financial gain combine with a healthy dose of slapstick and a smattering of scatological humour to make an irresistibly funny night at the theatre.
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March 2008: THE GODDESS TRILOGY
A Production from Read Write York
An Epic Storytelling event arrives
in York. Let performance storyteller
Xanthe Gresham guide your through the
wild, strange and exotic worlds of three
supernatural characters: Aphrodite, Isis,
and Hecate. The Trilogy will be performed
on one day in York, and is divided into three
parts, each telling their own unique tale:
APHRODITE AND THE REAL RED SHOES
Ransacking literature and mythology from
the Stone Age to Hans Christian Anderson,
from Ancient Greece to Soho, Aphrodite is
summoned. Six foot, perfumed with
ambrosial oil, a perfect snake tattooed
between her shoulder blades, she presents
her gift – The Real Red Shoes.
ISIS IS-YOU-SIS
If you've ever done online dating, burnt
relics of a recent love or generally lost
your golden lotus, then Isis Is You, Sis!
HECATE TANGO
How do you cure an addiction to sex?
Tango? Travel? How do you crack your
soul's pin code? Hecate has the answers.
She was chucked off Mount Olympus for
refusing to hail Zeus as the one and only.
Now she sits in outer space doing cosmic
sudoku on our behalf.
Using performance storytelling, poetry and
mythology the energy of the great goddess
of blackness and beginnings is brought
back onto the dance floor. 'Brilliant, beyond the remit of storytelling!'
Ben Haggarty: Barbican Theatre
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March 2008: EASTER HOLIDAY DRAMA COURSE
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
PHYSICAL THEATRE
Spend 3 fun packed days working with theatre practitioners at a professional theatre in York
city centre, learning and experimenting with a range of physical drama skills.
We will study several different forms of physical theatre including mime, mask work and
clowning. Each of these disciplines will provide us different insights into the range of emotion
and human character that is expressed non-verbally. We will let your imagination run free as
you perform theatre pieces, create short stories and explore the art of comedy, all without the
restraints of props, sets or physical boundaries.
This energetic and exciting course will improve your current skills and teach you many
new ones!
No previous acting experience is necessary and if you’re between 11 - 19 years old and
enthusiastic about drama, this is the course for you.
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April 2008: HENRY IV
A Production from University of Hull
Henry IV is a play Shakespeare never wrote. He did, however, write another, highly successful play with a much longer (and more interesting) title, whose most prominent character was played by the most famous clown of his age (Will Kemp), and in which Hotspur (not the future Henry V) had the meatier part.
Performed on the London stages for some 25 years (and going through 7 printed editions) it was an undoubted theatrical success of its day. Today, however, we tend to name, produce and view this once highly singular play with an eye to what goes before (Richard II) and what comes after (2 Henry IV and Henry V). This all-female ensemble production kicks that 400 year old performance tradition into touch and reasserts the play’s uniqueness. Taking Shakespeare at his word, it focuses on a king, a battle, a guy called Hotspur and a fat, comic old drunkard. With a heart for their audience, ten girls intervene in the performance history of a Shakespearean masterpiece to create an energetic and exciting piece of theatre offering a counter-reading of the play as we have come to know it, a commentary on how we expect Shakespeare (and particularly his histories) to be staged.
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July 2008: GIRL AND DEAN HAND-CRAFTED SKETCH COMEDY
A Production from www.girlanddean.co.uk
Since their debut show at the Pleasance Edinburgh as part of the 2007 Fringe Girl and Dean (Jess Ransom and Sarah Dean) have performed sell out shows at the Canal Café Theatre and Pleasance Islington as well as regular gigs in London and Brighton. In 2007 Girl and Dean knitted all their props for their Edinburgh fringe show - beards, nuns wimples, ninjas nunchucks. Their newfound status as ‘wool-lebrities’ lead to performances to hundreds of craft lovers at the UK Knitting and Stitching Show, Alexandra Palace and the launch of Stitch n’Bitch UK, and a feature in US magazine Vogue Knitting. In 2008, the show maintains its ‘hand-crafted’ feel but with significantly less woollen items owing to knitting related RSI!
Praise for Edinburgh 2007... “This sassy tour de force tickles the ribs from the get-go.” The Scotsman “Girl and Dean are a unique & creative duo with an acute sense of the imaginary.“ Edinburgh Evening News “They ping-pong through an intelligent set of surreal fun without missing a beat. TV awaits.” The List “Excellent. I foresee a long career ahead.” one4review.com “A very gifted pair of confident artistes with a bright future.” Scotsgay “Lovely stuff. The props alone deserve an ovation...some truly nutty characters it all nips along making an hour seem too short.” Edfringe.com (audience review) “Fresh, inoffensive fun. A true festival highlight. The hour flies by with quality sketches, knitted together with the best soundtrack at the festival. A show for everyone.” Edfringe.com (audience review) “Loved it! Very funny.Two engaging performers. I took my 13 year old daughter & she really enjoyed it. Recommended.” Edfringe.com (audience review) “What a hoot!” Christine Hamilton
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October 2008: HOBSON'S CHOICE
A Production from Dringhouses Dramatic Society
Hobson's Choice is one of the great classic English comedies; rich and wonderfully written characters come to life in this hugely funny, touching and compelling drama. A play about class and gender, it remains as radical and relevant as ever. Set in Salford in 1880, cantankerous and obstinate Henry Horatio Hobson runs a successful bootmaker's shop. A widower with a weakness for a drink, he tries to get the better of his three
irrepressibly bumptious daughters. When he decrees 'no marriages' to avoid the expensive matter of a dowry, eldest daughter Maggie rebels and sets her sights on her father's master bootmaker - the exceedingly shy, Will Mossop.
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October 2008: VANITY FAIR
A Production from York Settlement Community Player
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November 2008: MELCHIOR'S MAGICAL MYSTERY QUEST
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
Seventy abandoned guests… a chase across the desert… fabulous presents left in a cowshed… a camel who keeps getting the hump… What links these mysteries with an alien fire in the sky? In the face of these wonders, Melchior (with a weird and wonderful bunch of other mere humans) muddles through his mad, mysterious undertaking. What does he think he is going to find if he ever makes it to Bethlehem? Can his quest succeed despite mistakes and misunderstandings, chewed ears and tempers, lost toothpicks, desert-crazed customs officials and that bald-headed man endlessly bouncing up and down in Turkish Delight? Richly spiced with seasonal songs and carols, Riding Lights provides its characteristic blend of riotous humour, mystery, slapstick comedy and magical glimpses of the first Christmas story. Melchior's Magical Mystery Quest also features the long-awaited return of the infamous Desmond T Camel.
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November 2008: ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT
A Riding Lights Theatre Company Production
written by Nigel Forde
directed by Jonathan Bidgood and Jonathan Race
designed by Anna Morris
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November 2008: ‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE
A Production from The Mooted Theatre Company
'TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE by John Ford is a dark disturbing slice of Jacobean tragedy, a play in which forbidden passions and unspeakable crimes collide explosively with tragic effect. Like Tarantino writing Romeo and Juliet, this is an energetic, uncompromising masterpiece of British theatre. Despite its age, the play depicts a world beset by discrimination, bigotry and censorship, issues that resonate as much these days as they ever did. Mooted’s intense production promises to raise as many questions as it answers. Mooted's previous production, David Mamet's A LIFE IN THE THEATRE, achieved critical acclaim and sold out houses across Yorkshire. 'Mooted's production hits home strongly...there is plenty of life in this theatre'
– The Press, York. 'The Mooted Theatre Co. open with a confident and well-crafted debut...their future is only to be anticipated.'
- The British Theatre Guide THIS PRODUCTION CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT MAY OFFEND
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February 2009: HOLMES AND WATSON: THE FAREWELL TOUR
A Production from Angus & Ross Theatre Company
Join Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, Mrs Hudson and Inspector Lestrade in an evening of mystery, amazement and reminiscence as an unrecorded case is re-enacted before your very eyes. Marvel at the beauty of the fabled Satsuma Stone! Thrill with excitement at the re-creation of the deadly struggle at the Reichenbach Falls! With Stuart Fortey as Holmes and Dominic Goodwin as Watson.
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March 2009: TELLING TALES
A Production from Read Write York/York Literature Festival
Nick is a singer, songwriter and storyteller, and a dynamic and passionate performer who knows how to draw in an audience. 'Superb ! Storytelling at its best !'
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May 2009: APRIL IN PARIS
A Production from Ratatat Theatre Company
Set a decade ago, Bet & Al lead humdrum lives in their small Yorkshire town until Bet wins a “Romantic Break” magazine competition – a holiday for two in Paris. PANIC! They’ve never been abroad before! The trip changes the way they view the world and each other once they return home. They sample French cuisine, wrestle with their phrase book and fend off a mugger on the Metro in this hilarious heartwarming depiction of the English abroad... Not to be missed. "This has got to be what theatre is all about. . Brilliant actors, wonderful, clever Godber. . .hugely entertaining evening. " - Godber's HAPPY JACK, 2008 Tour
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May 2009: ABANDONMENT
A Production from Dringhouses Dramatic Society
As divorcee Elizabeth moves into her newly acquired flat, raising a glass to the future with her adopted sister Kitty and life-long friend Suzy, they have vague dreams of lovers, babies and Elizabeth's birth-mother. The flat is the converted drawing room of an old Victorian house, and as the three women focus on the future they have little idea that the past is closer to them than they could ever imagine. The secret concealed in Elizabeth's new home is about to be disclosed after more than a century, revealing parallels between the present day and events of long ago. Playwright and novelist Kate Atkinson was born in York. Abandonment was first performed in 2000 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.
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June 2009: BEN OKAFOR
A Production from Friargate Theatre
"Ben Okafor is the kind of counter-culture renaissance man that denies lazy pigeonholing. Call him a reggae musician an actor or a political activist and you just won't catch the whole creative sweep of this passionate, articulate communicator and musician..." CROSS RHYTHMS
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June 2009: EDWINA HAYES
A Production from Friargate Theatre
Edwina Hayes is a singer/songwriter who has been a regular performer on the UK acoustic scene since 1999. Edwina was born in Dublin in June 1973 and grew up in Preston, Lancashire before moving to the East coast of Yorkshire as a teenager, where she has been based ever since.
Dividing her time between the UK and America, Edwina's second home is Nashville where she is much loved as a songwriter and artist. In March 2003 Edwina signed as a writer with Warner Chappell. Her influences include Mindy Smith, Ray Charles, Carole King, Van Morrison, Nanci Griffith, Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin and Bob Dylan.
As well as writing on her own, Edwina enjoys co-writing with her friends such as Carissa Broadwater and Malcolm Darwen and has also written songs with well known UK writers such as Boo Hewerdine (Patience of Angels - Eddi Reader) and Ricky Ross (High - James Blunt) and Nashville writers Don Rollins (It's Five O Clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson/Jimmy Buffet) and Bobby Wood (Talkin' In Your Sleep - Crystal Gayle). In 2005 Warner Brothers released Edwina's debut album 'Out On My Own' produced by Clive Gregson and John Wood, and her song 'I Want Your Love' from the album was included on the No.1 bestselling CD 'Acoustic Love'. In recent years Edwina has opened several shows for Van Morrison, twenty-six shows for Jools Holland, toured the UK four years in a row with Nanci Griffith and performed twice for Michael Parkinson at his Maidenhead pub The Royal Oak. She has also toured the UK with and supported shows for Gretchen Peters, Ricky Ross, Loudon Wainwright III, Roy Harper, Tommy Emmanuel, Sam Baker, Julie Fowlis, Sandi Thom, John Tams, Daniel Beddingfield, Chris While, Julie Matthews, Tom Baxter, Boo Hewerdine, KT Tunstall, Clive Gregson, Chris Difford, Ruby Turner and Lulu. Edwina appears as a guest vocalist on recent albums by Alastair Artingstall, Christopher Holland, Kate Bramley, Jimi Alexander, Shane Lynch, Joan Coffey and Dan Webster. In 2008 Edwina released her second album 'Pour Me A Drink' on her own label Twirly Music. Much more acoustic and reflective of Edwina's true style it continues to attract an increasing number of sales and fantastic reviews.
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October 2009: FAIR TRADE
A Production from Mikron Theatre Company
Reap the dividends of Mikron Theatre Company’s insight into the co-operative movement – from its roots in the early part of the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution resulted in exploitation and misery for many working people.
Did it all begin at Toad Lane in Rochdale in 1844? We shall wander down the aisles of history to bring you the true story, told, of course,
with a mixture of music, humour and sadness.
This production is in partnership with the Co-operative Membership. “Fair Trade, performed with great verve and versatility..., is a tight and pacy production with a lot of humour” – Huddersfield Examiner
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