Monday 25 February 2013

'I will be EVERYTHING', Peterborough Pilot Workshops


Hi, I'm Holly and I’m excited to say that I’m the new intern for NIE. As part of my placement I’ll be mainly focusing on the Peterborough-based projects that NIE have planned for this year.

Last week we were working in primary schools round Peterborough picking on some exciting young minds for ideas to turn into a new show, ‘I will be EVERYTHING’. The workshops focused on the world of the future, fast-forwarding students to  2063 and the terrifyingly old age of 58 and asking them to explain a little more about their new world! Discussion included the new and exciting and also the scary and worrying things that the 2060s have in store, with students presenting their thoughts to their classmates.

Amongst our 58 year old participants we had a monkey, a ninja, a few dentists, quite a few footballers and one ghostbuster. We were told of several new inventions, including flying cars, houses that can get bigger and smaller and a newspaper that has tomorrow's news.

Even new words, ‘Catadogo’ anyone? Someone from 2063 could tell you that it means, ‘I like your pet’!

It wasn’t all happy news though, in 2063 everyone has red eyes and there is a worryingly growing population of giant ants...

Thank you to all the kids and teachers and West Town, Middleton and The Beeches primary schools for all your help and enthusiasm, we can’t wait to starting using your ideas in ‘I will be EVERYTHING’!


Holly Sharp - NIE Intern

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Hansel and Gretel and Past Half Remembered

After wrestling with fake snow, tree trunks and blowing up hundreds of balloons, sadly, the first show I worked on during my work placement with NIE has come to an end at the Key Theatre in Peterborough. However, we will be back at the Key in May with North North North so we look forward to working with them again. Hansel and Gretel has been great and I have been able to work closely with Cat and Sarah, the Producer and Assistant Producer, which has given me a real insight into what it takes to make a show happen. Hopefully the show will be back at the end of the year, so watch this space!



So onto the next show! We are very excited about our first ever appearance in Wales and one night in Reading with award winning Past Half Remembered. The show will start in Reading on the 26th March at the South Street Arts Centre and then travel over to Cardiff to the Sherman Cymru Theatre for the 27th- 28th March. Ticket are available and it looks to be a brilliant show.

Katie White

Monday 18 February 2013

Hansel and Gretel shows and art installation

We've had a brilliant time in Peterborough with Hansel and Gretel playing at the Key Theatre this February half term. Here are some of the audience responses to the show: Alongside the production, we have been working in collaboration with Metal, Vivacity and artist Robyn Woolston to create an artwork in response to the show. Robyn has worked in 3 local Primary schools (The Beeches, Hampton Vale and St Thomas More) to help generate the material, and ran craft workshops over each performance day at the Key Theatre. The result was a beautiful installation picking up key words and phrases from the show, and bringing the forest into the Key Theatre foyer:


 


Thanks so much to the Key Theatre, Vivacity and Metal and the audiences in Peterborough for making this a really special week!

Cat Moore - UK Producer

Friday 15 February 2013

Hansel and Gretel in Peterborough

We have been working on projects in Peterborough for many years now in collaboration with Vivacity. This has included our site specific show Tales from the Middle of Town co-produced with Eastern Angles which transformed a former Waterstone's store in Queensgate shopping centre and was a walkabout show using young people as our co-creators,with the material generated through storytelling workshops in 12 Primary schools.

 

 We are really pleased to be back in the City this week with family show Hansel and Gretel which performed to family audiences at The Junction (Cambridge)in 2011 and has just returned from a seven week sell-out run at the Tobacco Factory Theatre (Bristol). This is the first time we have played the show outside of a christmas season, and we opened yesterday at the Key Theatre to very excitable half-term audiences.

 We have four more performances to take place and had some great responses from audiences so far:

"a wonderful, funny show, that I would have been very sorry to miss" Juliet Lee Catch it while you can! Cat Moore, Producer

Friday 1 February 2013

Hunger Rehearsals in Denmark

I have been in Haderslev in Southern Jutland working with Theatre Møllen on a new adaptation of Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger - (Sult in Danish....)

I am here with NIE regulars Robert Orr and Lenka Rozenalova and am working with two actors from Møllen and one guest performer who is Swedish.








We are having a great time and a real struggle with the 5 languages in the room. We have spent the last weeks hammering out a rough script using the novel on Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Czech and English. And playing lots of music. And volleyball.




We have short break now and then are back for more rehearsals at the end of next week.

Posted by Alex Byrne, Co-artistic Director. NIE.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sydhavnsvej,Haderslev,Denmark