Newcastle-based theatre company Greyscale has been awarded a grant of £1,500 from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation to support a paid apprenticeship position for young director Sarah Gonnet as she works as assistant director on joey s/he, a monologue about growing up in '80s Britain written by Newcastle poet and playwright Sean Burn, whose play Collector of Tears was the BTG’s choice as best new play in the North East in 2014.
joey s/he is currently in development and is being shared as a work-in-progress at Camden People's Theatre in London on 30 November and 1 December as part of their Shape of Things to Come Festival.
Sarah Gonnet is a writer and multimedia artist. She runs The Female Gaze Magazine and is currently developing a play about the history of women in film, from the late 1800s onward. She trained as a playwright with Graeae Theatre Company on their Write to Play programme in 2015/16. Her play Word Salad was part of Alphabetti Theatre’s The Rooms 2016.
Her work has also been performed at West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Cluny (Newcastle), Live Theatre, ARC Stockton and Northern Stage.
In addition, £10,000 has been awarded to Live Theatre’s G’ben/Write project which provides weekly career development, mentoring and support sessions lasting over six months for young writers of Afro Caribbean origin aged 16 to 25.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation was set up in 1992 to promote the arts, culture and heritage for the public benefit. Since its inception, Andrew Lloyd Webber has been the principal provider of funding for all its charitable activities.
In 2010, the Foundation embarked on an active grant-giving programme and has now awarded grants of £18m to support high quality training and personal development as well as other projects that make a real difference to enrich the quality of life both for individuals and within local communities.
Significant grants include £3.5m to Arts Educational Schools, London to create a state of the art professional theatre, £2.4m to The Music in Secondary Schools Trust and more than £300,000 annually to fund 30 performing arts scholarships for talented students in financial need.