Natalie Wilson, Theatre Centre’s Artistic Director, gives AYT an idea of what to expect from its forthcoming conference…

On 20 June, Theatre Centre will host Write Lines, a conference on new writing for young audiences for writers and industry professionals. Guest speakers include playwrights Amanda Dalton, Rob Evans, Bryony Lavery, Philip Osment and Evan Placey, and industry representatives Anthony Banks (NT), Jonathan Lloyd (Polka Theatre) and Purni Morell (Unicorn Theatre).

Theatre Centre is celebrating 60 years of working with writers to produce outstanding theatre for young people, and Write Lines is inspired by my experience of running our Skylines writers programme. Over the past 12 months, Skylines has encouraged 47 emerging writers to develop work for audiences aged four to 18.

I noticed how much energy was generated when writers came together, exchanged ideas, listened, questioned and debated. These moments of reflection and learning seemed to be cherished by the writers, and I want to present this opportunity again but on a bigger scale. New writing for young audiences is a niche area but the beauty is that it is open to all: experienced, emerging, young or old.

The Write Lines conference is designed to bring together writers, artists, commissioners and producers, and to harness a sense of shared purpose and best practice to produce quality new plays. The contributors offer an extraordinary and diverse wealth of experience and perspective which I hope writers will find immensely valuable.

Our contributors will galvanise debate on collaborative working with young people, cross-artform inspirations and making extant stories fresh for a contemporary stage.

Writers will be able to meet like-minded artists and hear from the commissioners about what they want from the plays they stage. TYA-England’s series of debates, Whose Title Is it Anyway?, will take a new turn with Evan Placey (winner of the Brian Way Award 2012) presenting a provocation to four leading new writing commissioners on what writers can offer the programmes of our theatres and companies. Write Lines aims to bring writers and producers together, and perhaps a few new collaborations will be seeded by the end of day. Each delegate will arrive at Write Lines with questions and curiosity. I hope each will leave with some answers, a new question, fresh vigour and a strong line to pursue in their individual practice.

With this in mind, acclaimed playwright Rob Evans whets our appetite by telling us why he writes for young audiences…

Children have not yet had the link between their imagination and their physicality broken. They move and fidget and squirm, and if you get it right they lock on tight to your play with eyes as wide as saucers and they really, really watch. This is so satisfying to me as a writer because it’s how I feel when I’m writing.

Writing is a visceral thing; it can make me cry or explode with laughter. I think this very strong physical reaction is why I work a lot on plays that get performed to young people and their parents and teachers.

The reaction of young audiences in turn affects adults who watch the shows. Adults often think of plays for young people as a kind of babysitting service, then find they get sucked into the story. Theatre that engages both adults and young people equally is something to strive for. When you see young people and adults (their parents or teachers) enjoying the same story, the boundaries we might perceive between young and old seem made of the flimsiest stuff.

Visit the Theatre Centre website for details of the event.

Natalie Wilson and Rob Evans

Natalie Wilson became Artistic Director of Theatre Centre in 2007. Theatre Centre has been touring new writing for young audiences since 1953. Robert Alan Evans is a writer, devisor and director working across the UK. He is the winner of the TMA Award for Best Show for Young People and his work is translated and performed across Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

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Pah pah! Polka Theatre’s production of The Wind in the Willows roars along at the pace of Mr. Toad’s motor car, sweeping up its audience of under-11s, and many of the adults too, into a giggling frenzy. Kenneth Grahame’s timeless story of the friendship between a group of woodland animals is beautifully retold by Toby Hulse, who manages to combine the charm of the original with a real sense of playfulness and energy.

This playfulness is best conveyed in moments such as the interplay between the animal and human worlds. The gang make use of two gigantic spoons as the oars of Ratty’s boat, a Colman’s Mustard box becomes a caravan and the gigantic Toad Hall is a red letter box. The sheer inventiveness of it is a delight and draws some lovely parallels between the worlds of children and adults. It also works as a nice little nod to the darker side of human nature, in which Mr. Toad’s famous spell in prison becomes entrapment in a glass jar, his prison warden a cruel boy.

The cast all put in strong performances and yet the real star of the show is Mr. Toad himself, played by an exuberant Robert Saunders. His energy does mean his absence at the start of the second half results in a slight dip in pace that is rescued by a touching song, sung by the lovely Ailsa Joy as Mole about the delights of home, a particularly important theme in the book.

Another of the book’s themes that is utilised well is that of class differences. Mr. Toad is the perfect example of an eccentric upper class fool and this is nicely realised in moments such as his disregard for his ferret servant, for only select animals have voices and know how to use them. Spying the mistreated ferret amongst the animals that take over Toad Hall in the climax of the play, I couldn’t help but feel slightly on the side of the squatters as the gang attempt a daring rescue.

A well choreographed fight later results in victory for the woodland friends and yet the real triumph lies in Mr. Toad’s journey from pomposity to his acceptance of himself as just the same as his new-found friends. With a fairytale set and enchanting costumes, The Wind in the Willows is a fantastic alternative to the glitz of celebrity filled pantomimes and is a real Christmas gem.

The Wind in the Willows is playing at the Polka Theatre until 16 February 2013. For more information and tickets, please visit www.polkatheatre.com

Rebecca Hussein

Rebecca Hussein likes cats. She also likes writing about the theatre. A bit. But she mostly likes cats.

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It’s hard to believe that the Olympic and Paralympic games have come to an end. I am the first to admit that I was sceptical about the whole event, and living in southeast London, spent a lot of my time on the run up convinced that I would not be able to leave my flat for the crowds of tourists. But even I miss the air of buzz and excitement that has surrounded us this summer.

One thing that has struck me about London 2012 is how it has succeeded in inspiring people to take up sport. Working in primary schools, I have definitely seen the effect – the children are sport mad and some of them have abandoned drama club in favour of taking up netball or hockey. The BBC news were even asking for people to get in touch with their stories of oversubscribed sports clubs and waiting lists. The big job now, I guess, is sustainability – keeping these clubs going now that the main event is over.

Here at Filskit, our minds have been whirring since our R and D project, and we can’t help but wonder how those of us in the performing arts industry can create a similar effect (on a much smaller scale of course). Over the summer we’ve been lucky enough to visit and work in different venues and catch up with some of our friends and mentors in the industry. On more than one occasion the topic of engaging with a local community or new audiences has been raised.

Of course the job of bringing in the local community or engaging with new audiences is bound to sit mainly with arts venues. They are solid buildings, present at all times, a constant factor within a certain area, whereas touring companies come and go, sometimes only the once. What we’re interested in is how visiting companies can inspire people to get through the theatre door and put their bum on that seat.

We don’t currently have an answer for this. But going back to the Olympics, what was it that inspired people to take up sport? I believe it’s seeing something spectacular, watching people who are at the top of their game achieve something amazing and thinking that you can try it yourself and you might be amazing too. That would work for us anyway.

With our new show for children, The Feather Catcher, we are hoping to create not just one show that can hop in and out of venues, but a whole network of events. As the performance is for ages 3+, we have planned an interactive story time that can go to nurseries or preschools, and we also have plans for a family friendly post- or pre- show workshop. We are also thinking carefully about branching out into a new area for us: Autism Friendly performances. This is by no means new territory in the theatre world, with venues such as Polka Theatre offering Autism Friendly versions of their in house productions. For us, as with the idea of creating work for children, this is an area that we have always felt strongly about but never considered we would be able to do, until we were approached at a sharing of our work.

By expanding the theatrical experience for children we want them to see theatre and the arts as something more than passive entertainment – something they participate and invest in, just as they do in sport. True, it will be difficult to replicate the superstar status of Chris Hoy and Ellie Simmonds, but contact with the performers and those who create the arts could still ignite an passion that could last a lifetime.

Filskit Theatre

Filskit Theatre are an all-female ensemble with a passion for micro-projection. The company, Sarah Gee, Katy Costigan and Victoria Dyson, have been making work together since 2008. As graduates of the European Theatre Arts course at Rose Bruford they were brought together by their shared love of projection and cake.

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Dame Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy Beaker, with all her exploits and adventures, is an institution for young readers. After first appearing in Wilson’s novel The Story of Tracy Beaker in 1991, Tracy stepped into the spotlight in a CBBC television series. Now, in a whole new venture for the irrepressible Tracy, she has made her stage debut with Mary Morris’s children’s musical Tracy Beaker Gets Real! Following a successful national theatre tour in 2006 – 2007, the play script and score are now available from Samuel French for theatre groups to perform. Wilson and Morris discuss the challenges, but also the satisfaction, of taking this beloved character from the page onto the stage and seeing her flourish.

Development on the project began when Wilson’s agent approached Morris to script a stage adaptation of Tracy’s story. Morris, responsible for BAFTA-nominated episodes of Tracy’s CBBC show, “chose to write it as a musical because the character was so strong and unusual, and seemingly able to do anything without stretching probability or losing her fan base, so I knew the character Tracy Beaker could carry it off as a musical.” For her part, Wilson talks fondly of going to see Vicky Ireland’s adaptations of her books at the Polka Theatre, but notes that this is an exciting new venture. Somewhat of a literary celebrity, Tracy’s strength as a character undoubtedly stems from Wilson’s original novel. On this subject, Wilson is quick to highlight that she made Tracy up rather than taking inspiration from a real person, even joking, “I’m not sure I could cope with a real-life Tracy!”

Morris’s history of writing “wonderful scripts for the TV series” meant that Wilson was delighted when she agreed to script the adaptation. Yet Morris emphasises that the processes of writing for the stage and the screen are “different in many ways”. Creative independence is perhaps the biggest distinction between the two mediums, with Morris describing how she “was completely in charge of the story I chose to give to Tracy and her friends… as long as Jacqueline was happy with the script, which she was.” Morris reveals that in her experience of television writing, “the writer is only a part of a production team where much consultation goes on during the writing and others have the final decision on where the stories go.” In contrast, Morris could concentrate on her vision when writing the musical, but she does note that “there were some story and character issues that had to be ironed out to make it flow better” between first draft and the final production. She adds, however, that this process of editing and redrafting is “a normal part of writing”.

For Wilson, the strength of the musical lies in Morris’s creation of a piece of theatre that is different to the novels and television series. Watching the musical on stage, Wilson found herself “completely involved in the performance, as if it was a brand new story”. Perhaps this is precisely what an adaptation should achieve: an affectionate tribute to the original with its own distinct voice and style. Morris recalls the nerve-wracking feeling of seeing the production performed for the first time, which included nerves for the performers and musicians: “I want them to be comfortable in their roles and I want the audience to like them as well as the writing and the music.” Tracy Beaker Gets Real! is a play in its own right, but there is always a debt to the original author of an adapted work. Morris certainly felt this pressure, adding, “And of course, I wanted Jacqueline to like what she saw.”

Morris thrived on having the opportunity to embrace the creative freedom of writing for the stage. “Theatre works in a different way to TV: a theatre audience can bring their own imaginations to the play. For example, if I set a scene in a burger bar we can do it on stage with lighting and minimal props – we act like we’re in a burger bar, therefore we are.” Theatre is essentially liberating for writers, actors and audiences alike. Morris and Wilson agree that young performers and theatre groups should embrace this freedom of interpretation. They advise: “forget the TV version and make the characters your own”. Morris is clearly aware of the pitfalls of theatre, describing herself as a fan of “good theatre”. She names her favourite play as Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. In her mind, it is “a very risky play to stage and perform. If you don’t get it just right, it doesn’t work as well.” She recognises therefore that young performers putting on Tracy Beaker Gets Real! “must work within the parameters of the actual words in the script, the story and the music”. The power of the imagination must not be neglected, however. For Morris, “the joy of theatre is that other people can use their own creative imagination when they come to do it”.

Audiences should also embrace their creativity when they go to the theatre. Morris pictures the audience as an active force in the theatre because they are constantly engaging with the actors by using their imaginations, whereas “on screen locations have to be represented realistically which makes the audience much more passive”. Both Wilson and Morris attend the theatre, with Wilson commenting that she “admired the recent stage version of Carrie’s War”; goes “to every single Alan Bennett play”; has seen Wicked, Mamma Mia and We Will Rock You; and thinks Billy Elliot is “electrifying”. So what of the benefits for children watching a stage version of a book? A matter of opinion. Morris comments that “dramatising a book that is already loved and widely read can encourage children to take an interest in theatre” whereas Wilson sees the musical as a springboard into Tracy’s story, noting that “if children enjoy a dramatisation they frequently want to read the book afterwards”.

Adapting Tracy Beaker for the stage became a means of debunking some of the myths surrounding theatre and performing for younger audience members. Morris recalls that some young theatregoers “expected to see the actress who played Tracy in the TV series on stage. It was as if they believed only that actress could be Tracy Beaker.” However, it is this process of witnessing other actors play the roles that helps young people to realise that “theatre is a creative art, not a copy of a TV series”. Undoubtedly, this kind of reinvention of a children’s book on stage can only be a positive thing, but it is dependent on having a story that works flawlessly. “Getting kids to read is more about reaching them with the book’s story material. Then word of mouth from their peers who are enthusiastic about the book encourages more kids to read.” Wilson has experienced this as both writer and reader, remembering, “I loved Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield. There’s been a brilliant TV adaptation, but I don’t think there’s a stage version yet.”

Like Ballet Shoes for Wilson, The Story of Tracy Beaker has become a rite of passage for countless young readers. Now, with Morris’ new play script and lyrics, a whole new generation of theatregoers are meeting Tracy for the first time. The fruits of Morris and Wilson’s working relationship are an innovative musical adaptation that embraces its connection to its source material whilst taking the story – and Tracy herself – to an exciting new level, paving the way for other new children’s musicals. Exhilarating for writer, adapter, performers, readers and audiences alike, Tracy’s story is also heart-warming and inspirational to both theatregoers and avid readers.

To order a copy of Tracy Beaker Gets Real! or for more information please visit www.samuelfrench-london.co.uk

Laura Turner

Laura is a writer from the East Midlands. After studying English at the University of York, she trained as a writer with Hull Truck Theatre, BBC New Talent and the Royal Court Theatre. She has worked extensively with touring theatre company Chapterhouse, where she is currently Writer in Residence, as well as other regionally-based companies. Laura wrote an episode of BBC EastEnders: E20 that was screened in 2011 and her adaptation of Jane Eyre recently toured UK theatres with Hull Truck Theatre Company.

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