Coventry’s Belgrade is to host a festival of theatre showcasing some of the best new work made for and by young people to mark the 50th anniversary of the invention of theatre-in-education.
The two-week festival, Inspiring Curiosity: In Our Own Words, will involve participants from the Belgrade coming together to present a programme of six works produced in association with some of the UK’s top theatre practitioners including Frantic Assembly, Vamos Theatre, curious directive and Newcastle’s Gateway Studio Project.
Festival producer and Belgrade associate director Justine Themen said, “the festival is all about showcasing the richness and diversity of theatre made by young people in the UK today.
“Much of the community theatre practised across the UK today exists because of theatre-in-education and the work of those early pioneers. The legacy of TiE continues to inspire much of the Belgrade’s work within the community, encouraging a whole new generation of young people to take an active interest in the world around them through drama.
“Inspiring Curiosity: In Our Own Words aims to give a voice to the diverse experience of young people by exploring issues which impact directly on their lives. We’re hoping to celebrate the significant contribution made by young people to theatre as well as inspire curiosity in future generations of young theatre makers nationwide.”
Opening the festival programme in the main house is a new collaboration between the Belgrade’s black youth theatre and Newcastle’s Gateway Studio Project, Broken (Wednesday 8 and Friday 17 July).
This will be followed by The Impossible Language of the Time (Wednesday 8, Saturday 11 and Wednesday 15 July), a new play by Chris O’Connell developed in collaboration with the Belgrade’s senior youth theatre.
Somewhere To Belong (Thursday 9, Saturday 11 and Monday 13 July) is a new collaboration between the Belgrade’s newest group Asian youth theatre and full-mask company Vamos Theatre. It explores “the inner jihad of an Asian youth in 21st century Britain”.
This will be followed by a collaboration between the Belgrade Youth Theatre and the Shine On over-50s group. Created in conjunction with Chris White, associate practitioner and director for RSC Education, I Burn, I Pine, I Perish (Thursday 9, Saturday 11 and Monday 13 July) combines some of Shakespeare’s best-loved poetry with some of the performers’ own stories and features a cast of performers aged from 11 to 85.
Ctrl Alt Delete (Friday 10, Tuesday 14 and Thursday 16 July) is a ”tender and at times troubling study of memory, human relationships and the instability of personal identity as seen through the eyes of an Alzheimers sufferer and their family”. It is devised and performed by the Belgrade’s Canley youth theatre group and is directed Jouvan Fucinni in collaboration with Jack Lowe from curious directive.
This will be followed by a collaboration between the Belgrade’s senior youth theatre and Frantic Assembly, Sleeping Through The Alarm (Friday 10, Tuesday 14 and Thursday 16 July).
Physical theatre company Highly Sprung returns to the Belgrade with its high-energy performance-piece Pages from Monday until Sunday, 13 until 19 July.
Among the visiting youth theatres are EGO performance group with its new play The Intriguing Case of SPJ (Friday 17 July), an “emotional but uplifting story about an abused child and his journey through the care system”.
Bristol Old Vic’s Propolis Theatre will visit the Belgrade on Friday 17 July with its production Spill, a “dynamic celebration of the age-old topic of sex presented through a combination of music, movement, puppetry and authentic representations of real people”.
Representing the Gifted and Talented element of the Gateway Studio Project's education programme, Gateway Youth Dance Company will present Missled on Saturday 18 July, a modern contemporary dance piece featuring choreography created as part of the students’ GCSE examination in which they achieved maximum marks across the board.
Bulwell Youth Theatre, an outreach group for 9- to 14-year-olds run by Nottingham Playhouse, will make its first visit to the Belgrade with Little Red, a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, on Saturday 18 July.
Completing the line-up is The Gap Arts Project with its new production Benched (Sunday 19 July), a community drama exploring what it is to be a young person in today’s society.
Further details are available at the Belgrade’s Inspiring Curiosity web site.