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Dateline: 22nd August, 2006
On Top of the Town in Newcastle and Groningen Eight young people from across the north east of England will be amongst the first to tread the boards at the new Northern Stage in Newcastle when it opens at the end of August. The young performers, who were recruited from youth theatre groups across the north east, will join with eight performers from Groningen in the Netherlands to perform On Top of the Town, a collaboration between theatre companies Noord Nederlands Toneel and Northern Stage. Devised over eight months in both Newcastle and Groningen, On Top of the Town looks at the way we describe our cities to others and the stories we tell and re-tell to illuminate them. We are brought up to believe that across the land and the oceans, deep down people are all the same. And if this is true of people from the farthest reaches of the world, it must be true of those separated by just a small stretch of the North Sea. But when a group of young people from different sides of this sea come together and discover they don't, what happens? Played out in the new theatre's main stage, on a set that becomes increasingly more intriguing as the performance progresses, On Top of the Town plays with the idea that characters are standing on a rooftop, surveying the city; the streets and landmarks they can see are shared, but the way they see those streets and landmarks is unique. Their cities are made up of their own experiences, relationships and stories. The play is a celebration of moments of shared unity and individual disparity. Working in two languages, with sixteen young people and three co-producing partners, the experience of understanding and misunderstanding has been at the very heart of the project. Rachel Feuchtwang of The British Council Netherlands, Annie Rigby of Northern Stage and Floris van Delft of Noord Nederlands Toneel (NNT) have been working together to create an honest and revealing dialogue between the young people in Newcastle and Groningen. "Like exploring a foreign city, the process of making this piece of theatre has been full of times of feeling surprised and amazed, getting lost, getting found again, and managing to make sense of what seems like chaos. And it feels that only through the experiences we have had of being in new places, meeting new people, and sharing moments of familiarity as well as misunderstanding, have we been able to think about who we are ourselves" explained Annie Rigby of Northern Stage. "Working with people from abroad opens up new horizons. It has been a great experience to co-direct this piece with Annie, and negotiate our ideas across the North Sea!" said Floris van Delft of Noord Nederlands Toneel. On Top of the Town will premiere at the Noorderzon Festival in Groningen and will be the first production on 31st August at Northern Stage. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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