Red Ladder Theatre Company

The what? The SEVENTH of JUNE? What happened to the first half of the year? Slow down I wanna get off! Which is what I did last week – Ella and I and the kids went to The Gaia Tribe, a small festival in which 250 people came together to form a sustainable, low carbon community in a beautiful valley north of York. The week was wet, our new tent leaked, but we sang new songs, listened to a brilliant story teller and connected with a field of total strangers. The key to the week is exactly that: connection. It is difficult to make more than eye contact with people you have never met or trusted – but these are skills we will need to hone if we are going to survive the bleak future. Before we went we had been seriously discussing how we can move towards a self-sustaining existence. Whether this means moving onto a piece of land with several other families like the community at Steward’s Wood in Devon or just getting a vehicle and joining the traveller community is the big question. Getting a piece of land to live on and with, from which to grow food and to build our homes upon – this has been the basic need of mankind for thousands of years and here we are in the 21^st century fighting for the right to live off the land – just like the Diggers in the 16^th century. Finding the right people to share the land with is the other dilemma – I don’t just mean who will squabble with least – I mean skill sharing. I don’t have many skills in land management, fence building, animal husbandry etc but I am willing to get mud under the finger nails and learn new skills in order to live a calmer, slower existence.

Meanwhile, back in the frantic world… we are two weeks away from the Emerge Festival and our new production ‘Bittersweet Sunshine’. Chris Lloyd our producer has gone to collect the set from Q Divisionwhich means that the cast will get the opportunity to rehearse on the set for the last two weeks. Duncan Marwick the director is due to write the next Red Ladder blog so he will have more details about how close they feel to being ‘ready’!!!

Since I last blogged we have cast UGLY. After the read-through of Draft 1 I felt that Jo Mousley   and Peter Hinton were so strong that I offered them the roles of Mrs Mason and Ben respectively. On the 10^th May I ran a casting workshop at The National Youth Theatre studios to find our Woody and Mert. As Emma describes in her blog  the artists we invited were all really gifted and I was delighted with the commitment shown throughout the workshop. In the end, after long discussions with Emma and Sara Perks (our designer) I was able to offer the role of Woody to Beck Rogers and the role of Mert to Anna-Maria Nabirye . 
I have now started my preparation on the UGLY script and to get ahead of the process I am taking the UGLY cast (including Calum Clark our Stage Manager – who will play the role of Border Guard for the whole first scene!) away for a working weekend in July!

The tour will be finalised very soon  - so check out your nearest venue and come and see UGLY – I guarantee you will have your thoughts provoked!!