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Presents
WHAT THE WALLS SAW PROGRAMME
Monday, 17th August 2015
www.chesterperforms.com/youngcompany
WELCOME! Welcome to a new season for the Grosvenor Park Young Company. After an intensive three weeks, we are pleased to present What The Walls Saw, an original play, part devised and part written by Young Company writers Amber Houlders, Billy Marsh, Gus Kearns, Nick Wright, Nina Ward, Olivia Andringa, Rebecca Roberts and Ryan Garry. This year’s project has seen a flurry of creativity that has culminated in a whole new approach to our final production. While in previous years we have used the Open Air Theatre as our preferred space, What The Walls Saw will see us out in the park to create an immersive audience experience. We hope you have a great time with us and don’t forget to check out our blog to see what we got up to in the last three weeks! www.chesterperforms.com/youngcompany
GROSVENOR PARK YOUNG COMPANY The Grosvenor Park Young Company is produced by Chester Performs. It’s a unique opportunity for local creative talent, aged 16-24 to gain valuable experience working alongside a professional team of theatre-makers. Under the guidance of directors Freyja Winterson, John Young and Thomas Frith, and through mentoring from Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre’s professional cast, production and creative teams, the young company have written, produced, and will now stage their own work. Today is the result of all their hard work as they have the chance to perform their original performance to a live audience.
“The 2015 Grosvenor Park Theatre season is now complete as Chester’s ambitious, dynamic community of young theatremakers open their fringe festival of performance pieces. We’re delighted you’ve joined us to hear what they have to say” Alex Clifton, Artistic Director, Chester Performs
WHAT THE WALLS SAW Whole. (noun) A thing lacking no part or element. WHAT THE WALLS SAW is a brand new site specific performance asking questions of what it means to be ‘whole’. Created by Grosvenor Park Young Company, the performance fuses new writing and devised theatre to tell stories that have been kept secret within our city walls. Using verbatim interviews, overheard stories, and by simply watching the City as she breathes, the company have crafted a performance that promenades around the theatre and park, whilst telling the stories of people on their journey to becoming whole.
CAST Abbie McMannon Grace Tierney Jasmine Williams Mia Norton Sophie O’Keefe Angus Ewing Alfie Boynton Clayton Travis Jade Shaw Lauren Thomas Mathilda Hardstone Natasha Hale
PRODUCTION & CREATIVE TEAMS Directors, Thomas Frith, Freyja Winterson and John Young Assistant Director, Natalie Evans Movement Director, Stacey Hancock Writers, Amber Houlders, Billy Marsh, Gus Kearns, Nick Wright, Nina Ward, Olivia Andringa, Rebecca Roberts and Ryan Garry Stage Manager, Zara Roberts Production Designers, Steven Yates and Evangeline Oliver Costumes, Freya Coates Graphic Design, Maria Cecilia de Freitas Borges Marketing, Dorian Stone Project Co-ordinator, Nicola Haigh Writing Mentor, Glyn Maxwell Acting mentors, Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre Cast Production and creative mentors, Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre Production and Creative Teams
A WORD FROM THE DIRECTORS We’d like to welcome you to What The Walls Saw, the Grosvenor Park Young Company’s production for the 2015 season. This year has seen a shift in a new direction as we fuse new writing, devised work, and site-specific performance. The young company is formed of twelve actors, a movement director, an assistant director, three designers, a stage manager and nine writers. Over the last three weeks the young company have taken part in workshops exploring a wide range of different theatre styles, forms and genres. They have also had the opportunity to be mentored by the professional acting company and the creative team, in order to develop their skills and their understanding of the industry.
The three week process has consisted of a different objective each week. To begin with our work was concerned with a week of training and skills workshops. The young actors explored site-specific, cross-platform and interactive performance styles, whilst the creative team were able to shadow and learn
from the professional designer, stage managers and production manager. This culminated in a sharing of devised work at the end of the week. In week two, we began the process of ‘foraging’, where the young company went into the city of Chester asking people what made them ‘whole’, the umbrella theme of the piece. We then took these responses and began creating work using this material. In the final week, at the time of writing this, we are stitching these varied and diverse experiences together. Experimenting with the different ways we might bring together the worlds of nine different writers, in addition to devised work. A significant part of creating the show has revolved around the way in which we lead an audience around the park to the various locations we have chosen to perform the pieces. The Young Company have worked extremely hard bringing bags of enthusiasm and talent with them on every step of making the work. They have engaged and embraced this collaborative journey we embarked upon. Due to the array of performance spaces the design team have played a crucial role in linking the various narratives together. For us this has been an incredibly exciting three weeks. With the space to explore and develop ways of working as a company, we have been able to create this piece using a collaborative process. We are incredibly excited about the end result and we hope you enjoy it! Thanks, Tom, Freyja, and John
SPECIAL THANKS Liz Brown from Culture and Recreation at Cheshire West and Chester Council; Mark Carline, photography; Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre cast and crew; Grosvenor park Open Air Theatre front of house and security teams, Alex Clifton, Amber Knipe, Justin Fisher and all the Chester Performs team.
Produced by Chester Performs as part of Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre. www.chesterperforms.com/youngcompany
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@chesterperforms #YoungCompany
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