Standing in the shoes of those that have come before...

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There are many lovely things about my job as artistic director of Yew Tree Youth Theatre and one of them is writing…I do a lot of it…this week I finished Rumplestiltskin on Tuesday for the Sapphire Christmas show and I write this on blog on a very short break from my work on, “The Party at the End of the World.” This play will be performed on the 26th of July at Nostell Priory by some of the oldest members of the Youth Theatre and some visiting graduates.  As soon as that is done I start work on a retelling of “The Nutcracker,” to be performed in February.

Despite the intense pressure of extremely tight deadlines I still don’t take for granted the joy and privilege of being able to stand in a place I may never get to physically occupy and in the shoes of someone I may never get to meet…now in the case of that being a strange little man that weaves straw into gold so he can justify taking someone’s baby that’s not so poignant.  However my current work is showing me a world that is infinitely more haunting.  The play is set in July 1914 in the days leading up to the start of the war that would become known as the Great War.

I have just finished writing a scene where five young men contemplate their world that they know is about to change entirely and try and see what their future might bring as European nations take arms against each other.  To stand in that place in their shoes knowing what we know now about how events unfolded is epic in the truest sense of the word.  I am seeing what I viewed as a familiar piece of history in an entirely new light.  This vividness is compounded by the fact that some of the characters I am writing as actually lived, actually fought and actually had their lives irrevocably changed by the events of 1914 and that they were only a few people of an entire nation…I am also not oblivious to the impact portraying these men will have on the actors cast in their roles, you see another lovely thing about my work is that the writing is only a part of the process and the impact of the story is experienced first by actors and then by the audience. 

If you want to see what we make of these people’s story and spend some time seeing the world through their eyes be at Nostell at 7pm on the 26th of July as 23 young people relay the events of history with honesty and integrity…it would be lovely to share it with you…

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