Two Days in York

Stuart Mullins

Stuart Mullins is a freelance director, and the Director of Tiny Treasures, Theatre Hullabaloo’s collection of three short plays based on the lives of young carers. Here he talks about two days that the Creative Team spent in York with the young people from the Young Carers Revolution (YCR) learning about their stories and developing ideas for the plays:

Reflecting on our two days in York with the Young Carers Revolution (YCR) it occurs to me that they are our (the ‘our’ being the creative team) commissioners. It is the YCR who have asked us to create this new piece of theatre. It’s therefore a priority for me, that as experienced theatre practitioners we must discuss, explore and articulate what a creative process is and we must enable them, as commissioners, to give us useful and relevant critical feedback. Most importantly having done this, we must listen.

Day one was spent meeting the YCR and getting to know them. I felt they had to learn to trust us all, but most importantly they had to trust Kevin Dyer, the playwright. The afternoon was spent facilitating just this:
• It was about getting used to Kevin asking them questions
• It was about understanding that ideas grow, morph, take on new forms
• It was about the fact that drama is a wonderful mix of truth and fiction, and that metaphor and themes communicate far more than issues.

In between day one and day two on the Sunday, Kevin and I spent time eating and exploring what the narrative and form could be. We found ourselves in a café called the Bike Shed near the old city gates - a place which served good coffee a fine breakfast, but most importantly gave us the space to think and talk. From this time Kevin embraced the original idea of a three part structure and created the skeleton outline for Tiny Treasures.

On day two, the actors and I spent time exploring and improvising the first two parts. The actors, Lasana and Amy, worked well as a partnership, pushing and provoking each other. We achieved a great deal in a short time, presenting our young commissioners with enough material to generate their feedback. I was delighted to see that they not only felt it represented their lives accurately (much credit to Kevin for this), but that it also inspired them with its form.

Ultimately, following our two days together:
• Kevin left with a clear idea of what he wanted to write
• Inspired Youth were excited by the process and the potential outcome
• The young carers felt that they had been listened to
• And I felt excited by the show I’m going to direct!

What next? Miranda, Kitty Winter (the Movement Director) and myself will audition for the two actors, one to play a 35 year old mum and the other to play Jamie the main character aged 13 to 18. This is due to happen on April 1st, not a bad omen I hope 
Also, Kevin’s first draft has just landed in my inbox, so I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into that.

Stuart Mullins
Freelance Director, Tiny Treasures

World Day of Theatre for Children

From everyone at Theatre Hullabaloo, we'd like to wish you all a happy World Day of Theatre for Children and Young People!

Theatre Hullabaloo believe that going to the theatre for the first time is an important thing to do and should be part of everyone's childhood. To support this belief, in 2013 we launched our Theatre Firsts Campaign to help celebrate both children's first theatre experiences and adults first memories of going to the theatre.

#theatrefirstie booth

Today, on World Day of Theatre for Children, we are launching our TakeOff #theatrefirstie North East 2014 Campaign. Our #theatrefirstie booth will be spending a month at each of our seven consortium venues where audience members will be asked to:

1. Write their first memory of going to the theatre with us on a blackboard
2. Take a photo of themselves holding it in our booth on their smart phone
3. Share it with us on our TakeOff Facebook or Twitter pages with the hashtag #theatrefirstie 

Everyone who posts a photo will be entered into a competition to win a #theatrefirstie goodie bag and there will be a prize available for an audience member at each of the venues the pod visits. The #theatrefirstie pod will then spend a final week at our TakeOff Festival, Durham in October 2014.

We hope the campaign will raise awareness of how important going to the theatre is, especially amongst children and families in the North East. There is a lot of great theatre for children and young audiences happening in venues right across the region, from Berwick in the North to Richmond in the South and of course everything in between. 

You will find the #theatrefirstie pod at the following venues over the next seven months: ARC Stockton, Arts Centre Washington, Darlington Civic Theatre, Gala Durham, Middlesbrough Town Hall, Town Hall Theatre Hartlepool and The Witham Barnard Castle.

To get the ball rolling, Miranda and I have both done our #theatrefirstie:

If you want to find out about all the great shows happening in venues near you, please visit Theatre Hullabaloo's TakeOff Website, which promotes all the work happening for 0 - 16 year olds in the North East.

We hope to see your face or your child's face on our facebook or twitter page soon!

Dorcas
Communications Manager, Theatre Hullabaloo

Our New Show about Young Carers

At Theatre Hullabaloo, a child-centred approach is at the heart of everything we do; from working with the very best creative teams who specialise in making work for specific age ranges, to working with children throughout the creative process to inform the work we make. Our latest production, Tiny Treasures, is no exception and pushes this process to a whole new level.

The production, written by award winning playwright Kevin Dyer, is a collection of three short plays based on the lives and experiences of a group of young carers* and young adult carers (8-25 years) from York, called the Young Carers Revolution (YCR). The YCR provides empowerment and influence to young carers, and although administered by York Young Carers Service, the group has its own autonomy and sets its own agenda for projects and campaign themes. So far, YCR have made films, documentaries, street art and lyrics about what it is to be a young carer.

Their journey with Theatre Hullabaloo began in 2012 when a group of YCR came to see Theatre Hullabaloo's production of “Angel” at York St John University. The show really struck a chord with the young carers as it was a play about a serious subject (the unexpected friendship between a young girl and an old woman she meets with dementia) that was told in a sensitive and witty way. They decided that this would be the perfect way to share their stories with primary school children across the country and approached Theatre Hullabaloo to see if we would be keen to make a play with them - we were!

Working with Inspired Youth, who run the Young Carers Revolution, we invited YCR to come to our TakeOff Festival to see the brilliant “Mess” by Caroline Horton, a play about anorexia that we hoped would help us all to start to think about how we could address serious issues with humour and poignancy. We then ran a number of sessions asking the young people to tell us what the play should be about and together we started to create characters and potential story lines. We also played a lot of games and getting-to-know you exercises so that the creative team could understand the stories we needed to tell. Super powers and the lessons in fairy tales were things we kept going back to. YCR also worked with a brilliant illustrator called Becki Harper, who they commissioned to design the image for the show, and also chose the title - Tiny Treasures.

Stuart Mullins, the Director, has led the drama sessions with Kevin Dyer, the Writer, and two brilliant actors, Lasana and Amy, who both have the experience of being young carers. The group also have worked with Designer Bek Palmer to create mood boards for the set and costume designs and to look at set models and learn more about the process of theatre design. YCR will also have the opportunity to work with Sound Designer, Simon McCorry, to work out the sound landscape of the play.

So what is it that makes this project really exciting and unique? It's that all the creative decisions about the production are made by this group of young people; everything from informing and choosing the image for the show, to helping discover the stories and characters and even thinking about what it might look and sound like – how much more child-centred can you get? 

We all feel really privileged to be collaborating with such a brilliant bunch of young people and look forward to sharing our treasure trove of plays with schools in York and the North East in June.

Dorcas
Communications Manager, Theatre Hullabaloo

*For those of you that don't know, Young Carers are young people who help to look after someone at home. They might help to look after a brother or sister, parent or grandparent with an illness, disability, mental health problem or a problem with alcohol/drugs.