New project seems to be taking off! Namely ‘Five Years’ – a show I’ve started making with Nottingham-based poet and now theatre maker Neal Pike, who I met through the Mouthy Poets a few years ago.

Neal and I spent a year or so exchanging emails about the idea, with Neal sending me bits of writing. Then this March we managed to get in a rehearsal space together at Space Six in Newcastle to see if there was scope for a theatre piece in the writing – and it seems there is! We got some great material from the week, so applied for some residencies.

Amazingly, we got accepted for a scratch night at Square Chapel in Halifax, as well as Playground Festival at Nottingham Playhouse in October, and we’ve also been chosen for a residency with the North East Artist Development Network (NEADn)!

Having worked in a writer/director duo while making Sticking as a writer and performer, it’s exciting to now be putting lessons learned from that into practice in a director/dramaturg role in another co-created project. There’ll be a good long road ahead with this piece I think, and it feels fantastic to get such a head start on it!

Here’s some feedback from the scratch at Square Chapel:

·         Lots of impact, vivid, we began to inhabit the performer’s biography & world. Good physical use of the stage – the performer’s movement between the pages on the floor helped the monologue be dynamic.

·         Powerful, brave, thought-provoking

·         Brave performance!

·         Really enjoyed. Thank you.

Looking forward to the next stage x