Coinciding
with Valentine’s Day, Birmingham based Women & Theatre present ‘Loving Me’,
a brand new piece of musical theatre created with Looked After Young
People. In partnership with Birmingham Hippodrome, Service Birmingham,
the REP and LACES (Looked After Children Education Service), a group of young
people have worked together to devise an extraordinary piece of theatre on the
theme of love.
The
participants are Looked After Young People from around the Midlands
including Dudley, Hereford, Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham, and are aged
between 14-19. In October 2011, a dozen young people attended an introductory
workshop, where production ideas and potential music styles were
explored. A devising week followed, using improvisation and other drama
techniques to develop scenes, characters and songs, and creating an overall
structure. All the music and song lyrics have been written by the young
people with support from the artistic team – all have a personal story to
tell. Through January and February the group have been working on
stage production, management and performance skills. In addition 5 of the
young people are using this opportunity to qualify for Bronze and Silver Arts
Award status. The first half of the piece is set in cabaret format with the
second half taking place in a TV studio where the audience will watch a young
person up for foster care choose who will ‘Take Me Home ‘.
Women
& Theatre Artistic Director Janice Connelly says: “’The inspiration for LOVING ME came
from a project that Women and Theatre were asked to deliver around school
attendance and looked after young people. It struck me how many of the young
people we worked with enjoyed performing and had real talent in the art
form. As looked after young people we the public are their parents - they
are in our protection. Are we being good enough parents? do we love them
enough? and indeed as young people do they love themselves?”
The
performance will include interaction with the audience, and a post-performance
discussion with the participants/artistic team. On Thursday 14 February
this discussion will be chaired by Birmingham playwright David Edgar who
presented his acclaimed adaptation of The
Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby at Birmingham Hippodrome
in 2007.
The
artistic team has included W&T Artistic Director Janice Connolly, Digital
Music & Projection Artist, Sarah Wilson and Stage Manager, Liam Walsh.
Performance: Patrick Centre, Birmingham
Hippodrome, Thursday 14 February and Friday 15 February at 7.00pm.
Tickets available from Birmingham Hippodrome on 0844 338 5000. Prices
£8.00/£5.00 (disc.)
Background:
There is currently a fostering crisis as
there are more young people looking to be fostered than people to look after
them. In Birmingham the council has a target to
recruit between 200 and 300 new carers to increase availability and choice, so
more young people can be cared for locally rather than at a distance from the
city.
A
Birmingham City Council spokesperson said: “It is vital we help give all
children the best possible start to their lives – and foster carers play an
essential role in looking after some of the city’s most vulnerable
children".
About Women &
Theatre:
W&T has 29 years’
experience of producing exciting, accessible new work about things that matter.
We create engaging theatre and use interactive drama to promote wellbeing. We
work with communities in a respectful and participatory process and produce
drama that is both funny and moving because it connects with people’s real life
experiences.
In recent years we have specialised
in creating high quality participatory theatre with marginalised groups:
working with local LGBT adults, in the development of Gay Birmingham, Back to Backs;
working with intergenerational groups in recent Make Do & Mend; and regularly with women
in the probation service. Whilst all projects are different in content, style
and target group, all are united by core values of inclusion, empowerment and
the creation of quality theatre.
Loving Me is
very much part of this strand of work and also builds on our experience of
working with Looked After YP following on from projects such as Artist Audience; Our Take;
and Hooded.
Janice
Connelly
Janice Connolly is the
Artistic Director and a founder member of Women and Theatre. She has getting
on for 30 years experience of working with a wide variety of partners from the
public and third sector, creating and delivering new theatre and drama about
things that matter. Janice is also a successful standup comedienne. Her much
loved comedy creation Mrs Barbara Nice is a popular comedy circuit headliner
and performs her critically acclaimed solo shows in arts centres and theatres
up and down the country. Janice also has a career as an actress and has
appeared on TV many times. Probably best known for her role as Holy Mary in
Peter Kay`s Phoenix Nights,
she has also appeared in Coronation Street. Stage work includes playing Helen
in A taste of Honey
at The New Vic Theatre, Stoke and in pantomime with Lily Savage. Recently
Janice with women and Theatre has been running comedy courses for elders
including people with Alzheimers.
David
Edgar
Birmingham-born David Edgar
is a British playwright and writer who has had more than sixty of his
plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world (including both of the largest
British subsidised companies, the RSC and the National Theatre), making him one of the
most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great
Britain. He was resident playwright at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
in 1974-5 and founded the University of Birmingham's MA in Playwriting
Studies programme in 1989. David is Chair of the Eve Brook Scholarship Fund,
founded by his wife, which celebrates the achievement of Looked After young
people by giving them help to access higher education.
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