NATIONAL TOUR 2025
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
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"You think I’m some kind of broken kid and you just want to fix me. With games."
Joe’s eleven and home is hard. School is even harder. He breaks stuff: pencils, chairs, rules. One thing he won’t break is his silence.
Heather’s fifty-seven. She’s got a comfortable life and a comfortable home. But her comfortable world is about to be turned upside down as she and Joe spend an hour a week together. Every week. For a year.
Where will this journey of hours and weeks take them?
Cups On A String is a warm-hearted and moving new play, developed from remarkable true stories. It’s about playfulness, listening and laughter, and how risk-taking and trust can lead to growth and transformation.
Challenging, surprising and beautifully hopeful, Cups On A String blends theatre, live music and digital technology to take you into the heart of the friendship between Heather and Joe, and the profound impact it has on them both.
AGE GUIDANCE: 14+
After the success of our 2024 tour of Cups On A String, Riding Lights Theatre Company is pleased to announce the 2025 Spring Tour of the play. Cups On A String is produced in partnership with Transforming Lives for Good (TLG), a Christian charity that helps churches to bring hope and a future to struggling children.
Transforming Lives for Good is partnering with Riding Lights Theatre Company to tour Cups On A String to venues across the UK in spring 2025, offering a powerful and moving evening of theatre, and we’d like to invite you to book a performance.
Alongside the performance of Cups On A String, the evening will provide an opportunity to hear about the work of Transforming Lives for Good, and how each of us can play a part in supporting the lives of struggling children.
Hear writer Bridget Foreman and Director David Gilbert talk more about Cups On A String in the video here.
WHO WE ARE
Riding Lights Theatre Company are an independent theatre company, based in York. With over 45 years of recognition for our Kingdom-centred productions, we have been reaching audiences in churches, cathedrals, theatres, schools, prisons and community centres across the UK for decades.
TLG have 25 years’ experience helping children through trauma-informed coaching approaches, lunch clubs and support. In the UK, the challenges children face, like poverty, food insecurity, mental health problems, are escalating at an alarming rate. TLG work with over 200 churches and see over 5000 children’s lives transformed every year.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Booking options:
- £300 booking fee. All ticket revenue is split 70% - 30% to respectively Riding Lights – your church.
OR
- Buy-out of a fee of £1350 +VAT. All ticket revenue is kept by your church or you can offer tickets for free.
Ticket prices: £10 Adult / £8 Concession (U18s, unemployed, students, senior citizens).
Event duration: 90 minutes (no interval).
Audience capacity: minimum 100 seating.
SPACE:
- A flat and empty space of 6m x 6m to build our large set in. 4m minimum of height clearance. Please consider additional space around the 6m x 6m on all sides, as the performers get on/off the stage, go backstage, move around the set and sometimes move close to the audience. NB: backstage area behind the set for them to go to when they go off/back on stage.
- A table for our PA Sound System (operated by our technician) near the audience and sockets.
- Wi-Fi.
- A minimum of 5 x 2-gang 13-amp sockets, ideally very close to the set area. If you have extensions, that is very helpful. We have our own, but the more the better. We will need to plug in for our light and sound systems. NB: please let us know the level of blackout that will be possible for the performance as we will have a projector with digital art as part of the play.
ARRIVAL AND VANS:
- Access to the venue from 2:00 pm.
- Space for the 2 vans to stop safely to unload/load, as well as space to park the vans for the duration of the performance and overnight. If the vans have to be parked elsewhere, ideally no further than a 5-10 minute walk away.
- Ability for the company to bring in large pieces of the set into the church. Please let us know if you have double doors, any tricky entrances/corners or stairs that we ought to know about in advance.
RIDING LIGHTS TOURING COMPANY:
- 5 members of the cast and crew.
- Toilets, a changing room and a space for the company to store personal belongings securely.
- Accommodation: we kindly ask venues to offer accommodation. On our tours, this is usually in the homes of people connected with the church/community. We kindly ask for one room/person, with a real bed and breakfast. The company work late nights and very closely together, so it is important they get some privacy, rest and breakfast.
- Pre-show meal: we kindly ask venues provide a hot, light meal at the venue or very nearby at 5:00 pm.
LICENSING:
Venues may need a Public Entertainments Licence. If you do not have one, you may need to apply for a temporary licence. Venues can always have a discussion with their Local Authority about this and follow their advice. Riding Lights cannot be responsible for any costs involved in getting appropriate licences or in any associated costs. More information can be found on the government page here.
MARKETING AND PUBLICITY:
- Riding Lights will provide flyers, A4/A3 posters for your venue and promote on our RL social channels.
- For venues in Wales, we are very happy to provide materials in Welsh in addition to English.
- We will provide programmes to sell on the evening of the performance.
TICKET SALES:
- The church organizer and/or volunteers to welcome audience members and check tickets.
- Riding Lights hold an online Box Office to collect bookings (excl for buy-outs: please contact us more info).
- We strongly encourage churches to reserve tickets locally:
- Churches can collect cash (and then pass this on to our touring company on the night of performance).
- Churches can collect reservations and audience members can pay via card or cash on the door on the night of performance. The organizer/volunteers can use our RL card machine/cash float box for this.
- We ask churches to keep track of the number of local tickets, the type (adult/concession) and, on the door, if a purchase is of a ticket OR a programme.
WHO IS THIS EVENT FOR?
Everyone! Any individual who cares about children and has a passion for bringing hope and
healing to children. We encourage it strongly to people with an interest in the work of coaching and helping children in education. The recommended age is 14+.
Photos by Tom Jackson, Jackson Portraiture