Opening night for my latest play, Battery Park, has come and gone. I'm sitting here, exhausted but exhilarated after a fantastic rehearsal process that led to us making what I think is a great show. I started this blog as a student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I studied directing, as a place to reflect on my practice, and over a decade later I haven't kicked the habit. So here's a reflection on my process as a director - but also as the artistic director of Sleeping Warrior Theatre Company. It will be of niche interest to some I hope, and will be a resource for myself looking back. Battery Park is about a group of young people from Greenock who form a band and attempt to become bigger than Oasis in 1990's Britain. We know right from the off that they didn't succeed and we watch the main protagonist now - a 47 year old man - as he grapples with the choices made by younger him and how they still affect his life. Around a year and a half ago I appli...
Last week was taken up with mainly working on 'The Land of Lost Things' with the Beacon Youth Theatre. This is a devised musical created by myself, Marianne and Megan Yeomans in conjunction with all the young people. It's a pretty big undertaking with around 110 performers, aged from 4 up to 21 all taking part. Some of the cast from The Land of Lost Things One thing that I have been adamant about since I started running youth theatres over ten years ago (gulp) is that a youth theatre is not a stage school. It's not about auditioning, it's not about whipping out the same old shows to sell more tickets to the general public and it's not about who is 'talented' and who isn't. That's a different thing and there are various groups around Scotland who do it very well, but what I hope to do is create an environment where all participants can have fun through being creative . Of course if a student shows a great aptitude towards one thing or ...
So I have spent the last 3 weeks working on a new wee comedy called 'Love 2.0' with Sam and Molly at the RCS. This was a great wee chance to start from nothing and work with some actors in creating a brand new play. Molly Veevers as Suzie and Sam Keefe as Gary The idea behind the play was that social networking, Facebook in particular, has very little to do with being social. In fact it could possibly have the opposite effect. One of the characters, Gary, creates a completely false impression of himself online that then attracts the attention of Suzie. Everything looks like it's going to be a perfect match until they finally meet, and then have no idea how to actually talk to one another. We had a great wee audience who laughed throughout and I'm now looking at ways of bringing this and my other comedy, Lucas Petite, to the stage. There seems to be a huge gap in theatre for 20 somethings/late teens. Maybe the audience isn't there...
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