Northern Stage/RSC Invitation to Amateur Societies

Published: 14 December 2014
Reporter: Peter Lathan

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is to tour a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to 12 theatres across the UK. It will be a play for the whole nation, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016.

To celebrate Shakespeare’s unique role as the people’s playwright the RSC is looking to work with a local amateur theatre company in each city or town the production visits. From each of these amateur theatre companies six amateur actors (plus a director) will be cast to play the role of the Mechanicals when the play is performed in their city or town. There will be two of these groups in the north east. They will also be invited to perform at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon at the end of the tour.

The production will be directed by the RSC’s Deputy Artistic Director Erica Whyman, performed by a professional company of RSC actors with the amateur companies playing the Mechanicals.

Any amateur theatre company local to the partner theatre—in the north east this means Northern Stage and Newcastle Theatre Royal—is invited to apply. Amateur means theatre companies or groups that are run by volunteers and whose participants are volunteers.

Participants must be over 18 years of age.

Commercial youth theatres, youth theatre franchises, professional led or run community groups, professional led or run youth theatres or school groups are not eligible to take part. If the group is led or run by someone who is paid to do so you are not eligible to take part. If those participating are paid to take part in the production or share the profits of productions you are also not eligible to take part.

Participants must be amateurs defined for the purposes of this project as members of a pre-existing amateur or community theatre company who do not make their living as an actor, regularly take on paid work as an actor or list their profession as actor.

Participants may however have had some professional training in the past and may have in the past done some paid acting work. They may be retired from acting professionally or have left the profession some time ago.

There are full details on Northern Stage's web site from where an application form can be downloaded.

Erica Whyman said, "I am excited to hear voices from all over the UK, so I am looking for groups who have confidence in who they are. For instance Welsh-speakers, Yorkshire accents, Cornish traditions, all-women groups would all be very welcome.

"The Mechanicals are people with real jobs, and this production has a unique opportunity to honour what that might mean wherever you are. You will certainly need to be good-humoured, patient, open-hearted, prepared to learn and excited to perform on these wonderful stages.

"You do NOT need to have previous experience of performing Shakespeare and we can fully support any access needs and requirements you might have."

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