A Saturday to be grateful for...

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This week hasn’t been the easiest – as Gemma and I discussed last night there seems to be a slight tarnish on the world as people acclimatise to the darker evenings and drop in temperature that signifies the approach of winter.  I’ve been needlessly shouted at by parents in a schoolyard, frustrated by the lack of response from some of the organisations I work for and saddened by the circumstances of some of the people I work with find themselves in.  That on top of the usual business of a relentless schedule has made it a challenging week.

Yesterday however restored the balance entirely.   Gold Company were a joy and we really started to make progress on our Christmas play fine tuning scenes and tightening moments to make the storytelling as precise as it needs to be.  Then a couple of hours playing at The Hepworth with some particularly committed Gold Company members. This visit was the first step to our Responses performance we are developing that will take place in January, at the gallery, inspired by their Alexandra Bircken  exhibition.  In such a short time we had such a wealth of ideas – you can see images of our first workshop here.


Then the finale of the day – a trip to Manchester to see our very own Alice Proctor perform in her third year piece…it could have been the week I’d had, or the emotional content of the play that has kept me on the verge of tears since but I think it was neither of these…I think it was the depth and beauty of Alice’s performance – a performance that would have looked entirely in place on any professional theatre stage.   Knowing the years of graft and determination of set backs and courageous resilience that Alice has gone through to get to that place, the production and her performance was everything I needed to restore my faith in the world…

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