Ten down, fifteen to go. I refer to the theatrical venues in which Team TGWTIC (The Girl With The Iron Claws… must find pithier tag) are currently leaving their scorch marks.

As small scale tours go, despite taking a few scheduled days off here and there, it’s been pretty intense. The hour-long rollercoaster ride – featuring the likes of a troll queen (her bark is as scary as her bite), a handsome king (a proper fittie!) and a ‘wayward’ daughter – goes by quicker than you can say Team Claws. Our stage manager deserves particular kudos for adapting so adeptly to each space.

It’s not all been plain sailing. Just as us actors inevitably evolve ourselves and our characters through the journey of the tour, the layout and technical capabilities of each theatre contribute to that process. There’s nothing a missing stage manager, scant lighting rigs and a vandalised truck will do to dent our spirits! Fortunately we’re all extremely proud of Claws, as is evidenced by the combined volume of sweat seen when we return to the stage for our encores.

Speaking of encores, I’m reminded of the post-show talk that I, Ffion, Paul and Joe conducted with the wonderfully receptive residents of Norwich Playhouse. Did you know there are only 30 or so palantypists in the world? Perhaps more importantly, would you like to know what one is? She sits, hidden in the wings (so as to hear the action as well as possible without distracting) and, similar to a captioner, renders approximately two hundred words per minute onto a keyboard which converts its phonetic chords onto a computer and then onto the caption screen for your pleasure. I admired her all the more after being asked about a particular puppet I operate in the show. The question belonged to a young man who must certainly have been skimming the minimum age limit for TGWTIC. I was explaining to him the challenges I face when playing both sisters simultaneously and opted to describe it as a “head-messer-upper”. Ms Palantypist, I never did catch your name, and barely glimpsed your shrouded figure sandwiched between two black flats… but I dedicate this article to you!

Tomorrow is my day off and I sit here writing this wondering how I shall fill it. Will I take a stroll to my local Tesco (to cook food that can actually be eaten off a plate) and, without thinking, start heaving heavy boxes from its loading bay? Will fellow tube passengers avoid my eyes when my hands start puppeteering the air? In truth, I’ll probably just silence my phone and sleep until the police sirens and honking horns of South East London wake me. Tunbridge Wells, you were a lovely audience but the devil lives there and he bought the mattress for the hotel room I stayed in last night.

See you on the road, folks!

Image credit: Patrick Baldwin

The Girl with the Iron Claws is currently touring. Visit The Wrong Crowd’s website for dates and ticket information.

New York is one crazy place. I recently submitted myself for a non-paying gig and could not get an audition slot. Yes, you heard that correctly: the show was unpaid, but the competition to work for no money is so steep that they didn’t have time to see everyone. And we’re not even talking about competition for a role, we’re only talking about competition to get in the door. It’s a madhouse.

Recently, though, I was lucky enough to not only get in the door but to actually book a national children’s theatre tour. In fact, I’m writing this on the road – we’re currently driving through scenic West Virginia. Hour five and counting. Oy.

Luckily for me, the company I’m touring with treats its actors pretty well. We’re entitled to a decent weekly pay and per diem, overtime, and even rest invasion, or extra compensation for any hour worked that encroaches on the required 12-hour break between the time you arrive at your hotel for the night and the time you have to be at the van and ready the next morning. Touring can be difficult and exhausting, but this company has really done everything in its power to make things manageable for its actors.

This should be the norm, but unfortunately, it’s not. Every actor in the city is clamouring for a chance to perform, and many are willing to accept less than ideal working conditions to get that chance. It’s a city full of scabs. But, honestly, who can blame an actor for taking work? After spending four years and thousands of dollars on training, and busting your butt at a thankless day job, any role seems like a miracle.

There are some opportunities that seem too good to be true – showcases throughout the city that promise an audience full of agents and other theatre professionals scouting new talent. All you have to do is sell or buy a certain number of tickets (and, in some cases, pay your accompanist), and you will get to sing or do a monologue for these industry insiders.  Now, I don’t want to completely knock these showcases. They give actors a chance to practise their craft in front of an audience, and they also make decent quality video recordings of the performances, which are a life saver when it comes to submissions. And, while I don’t personally know anyone who has landed an agent from this type of performance, I would assume that someone, somewhere down the line has got work from this type of performance opportunity, or no one would do it. I can’t help but wonder, though – if the performers are the ones selling the tickets, who is inviting the agents and casting directors? Won’t it just be an audience full of the actors’ friends?

Theatres everywhere are struggling, and I understand the need to cut corners just to keep companies alive. But it does seem unfair to take advantage of actors who are just anxious for a chance to flex their creative muscles. Still, we actors don’t always help ourselves. It sometimes feels as though we push down our asking price by taking any job that comes our way, regardless of how terrible the contract might be. It’s difficult to say, and at its core it’s probably just a very vicious cycle that can only be solved by more money going into the arts, either through patronage or governmental support. Because, in order to survive, theatres need to make money, and actors need to act. Unfortunately, actors also need to eat and pay their bills. These are the pesky facts of life.

Image by Monica Reida.

If you are an American reader of A Younger Theatre and would like to contribute to the AYT USA blog series, please contact blogs[at]ayoungertheatre.com.

Theatre Centre is a company committed to serving the younger generations – for almost 60 years it has been commissioning new writing and touring theatre for young audiences. But now, Artistic Director Natalie Wilson is expanding its focus beyond commissions, which present “quite small gateways because you can only take in one or two writers at a time”. The solution to expanding? Skylines, Theatre Centre’s new free-of-charge professional development programme, which aims to bring together writers from across the country who are interested in writing for young audiences. Skylines will use workshops and online content to encourage the playwrights to “consider, investigate and explore younger audiences”, developing their writing “to make sure that younger audiences are still being served by the best, most talented writers this country has”.

Evidently, Skylines’ aims are as much focused on creating opportunities for playwrights as serving the best writing to their target demographic. As Wilson highlights, “I think this is very much the first [initiative] that’s looking at developing writers – not necessarily just the writing – that’s opening the doors to a mass of writers that wouldn’t necessarily at this point in their career be able to access the more developed programmes.”

Because, as Wilson explains, great theatre requires great writers: “When we tour a show, which is really at the heart of what Theatre Centre does, we are very committed to creating the theatre experiences for audiences, but to do that we need writers to be committed too […] There’s a clear pathway, a thread of continuum, between the Skylines project and our touring shows.”

And if the writing of those involved in Skylines makes it onto Theatre Centre’s touring schedule, their work may end up being shown in schools – but definitely not in a “dry and didactic” manner. As Wilson asserts, “the theatre element should come first. Good theatre, whatever age you are, is always a learning experience. And I think unless you’ve got good theatre – the art – within the work, the learning won’t be as enriched as it could be. Obviously by going into a school community, a school context, we have to push the learning element of the work because that’s what the school is there to do, but I think in order for the theatre to be a learning experience it has to have great art at the heart of it.”

So will Skylines be encouraging their writers to take a different approach to theatre – what is unique about the ‘great art at the heart’ of children’s theatre? “There’s lots of fundamental similarities [between writing for adults and writing for children], but when you write for young audiences I think you’re writing within different contexts; you’re not necessarily writing for a theatre context. You also have to really work with your audience to understand them in a way that I don’t think writing for adult audiences necessarily has to do. Adult audiences, if they’re interested, will make choices about going to see theatre, whereas a young audience is often watching theatre without having made the choice. Therefore it’s the writer’s responsibility to really understand the context, the language, and the concerns of their audience to make sure that it speaks to them.”

And in order for their writers to be able to understand the language of young people, Skylines is utilising all its resources – including digital ones. An integral part the initiative is the creation of an online community, allowing participants to remain connected to the project and access exclusive content wherever they are based in the UK. “I didn’t want to have a writing group located in one place,” Wilson explains. “By having an online community, we can work with writing groups across regions, and bring them together as separate entities into a community on our digital platform […] It’s a big experiment for us and we’ve worked quite hard – we’ve done a lot of consultation with writers about what works, what doesn’t work, what kind of content they want, how they might use it and how we can keep presenting an incentive for them to use it.”

It’s clear that Skylines has the needs of young people at its heart, encouraging playwrights to develop their writing for younger audiences and utilise online resources in order to remain constantly connected to the project. As Wilson states: “I’m a great believer that new writing can be responsive to the world around us and the world around young people, which is changing and needs redefining. I think writers are very well placed to investigate that in collaboration with young people, and I think that sort of relevance and responsiveness that new writing can have must be very compelling and engaging for a young audience.”

And as someone involved in A Younger Theatre – also a platform and resource for young audiences – I can’t help but agree.

Skylines will be using workshops and an online platform to develop the writing of playwrights for young audiences, culminating in a public writer’s conference in June 2013. The programme will be delivered in conjunction with five regional partners: the Everyman Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, New Writing South, The Royal Exchange and The University of East Anglia. For more information, see the website or Twitter.

Image of Natalie Wilson by Camilla Greenwell.

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a place for both the classic and the cutting edge, which is why a new take on Shakespeare is the ideal combination for a chance at Fringe success. With many of Shakespeare’s plays being taken up every year, it can be a hard task to stand out from the crowd in amongst the many Romeo and Juliets, shortened versions of Hamlet and the odd Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night. Two companies taking on this challenge are The Fifth Act from The Netherlands and Straylight Australia from down under, who are focusing on females, both within the plays and those that surrounded Shakespeare himself during his time.

Straylight Australia’s piece Shakespeare’s Queens: She-Wolves and Serpents explores “what it means to be a Queen” in Shakespeare’s England, where many of the issues “are still high on women’s agenda’s today: career or family first?; negative perceptions of powerful females; forced marriages arranged for political or commercial gain; infidelity, infertility and the use of sex as a bargaining tool.” The wheel of history turns once more, showing us that what goes around comes around – or has it ever left us? “The passionate, seductive, ruthless and vulnerable queens of his plays are as exciting to play as they are thrilling to watch,” says Kath Perry, a member of the three person cast.

The show is versatile, easily accessible to all and tons of fun to watch; it stems from a previous show Shakespeare’s Mothers: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know taken to the Fringe in 2010. The concept of the play is that Shakespeare is caught between two raging queens: Elizabeth I and her cousin and arch-rival Mary, Queen of Scots. He summons each of his queens from his plays to “contribute their experience to the debate”. This way, we hear speeches from some of “the greatest female roles in theatre” including Cleopatra, Queen Elinor and Tamora, and can see how much Shakespeare was influenced during his time at court by how much his queens resemble his patron, Elizabeth.

This is Shakespeare with a twist; audiences who may not feel up to a full Shakespeare production can watch this fast, funny, 60 minute piece, fill their Bard quota for the day and maybe see Tony and Cleo in the future, or those who know the plays well can revel in all the great characters being side by side, having conversations with one another and helping Shakespeare in his plight to calm the two queens. The show has already been in Sydney and Adelaide and there is a mini-tour planned for after the Fringe to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s home turf, and London – but Perry would like to spread the joy of the Bard as far as she can and “would love to take it to other cities and countries.”

The Fifth Act, instead of looking at a range of females, has focused on one woman in particular in their show Lady M.: Lady Macbeth’s Lady-In-Waiting, a small bit-part who would probably be able to tie up all the loose ends in the plot - if only she had more lines. “It’s a wink to the conflict between being a bit character or principal character in life,” says Sarah de Bruijn from the company. Amongst the comedy, “the dramatic foundation [is strengthened] through the play: the tragedy of a person who will not be remembered.” Every character in Shakespeare’s work is important, even if they are just a messenger; each has their part to play within the plot and in this case one of the smallest parts takes centre stage in this one woman show. “It’s pure poetry and the way Shakespeare puts characters down is still (in the 21st century) a true insight in human behavior.”

The piece is also a comment on the acting profession – actresses are always striving for larger parts and trying to get noticed by the right people as the weighting in roles between males and females is still, in the 21st century, uneven. Coming from The Netherlands, Fifth Act’s take on Shakespeare is different to our perhaps more “traditional” English pieces. The Fifth Act have a respect for traditional Shakespeare but would prefer to watch and create pieces that put forward a comment on his work than simply re-produce it. ”Lady M. is a very dynamic piece, more dynamic than you might expect from a solo [performance]. The audience reactions, and reviewers, are very enthusiastic about the play.” So far, so good in the Netherlands, and hopefully there will be the same success at the Fringe.

In cooking, TV chefs are obsessed with ‘classics with a modern twist’ – easy, mainstream dishes that have been tweaked to give them a little something extra for the cameras, and that is what Straylight Australia and The Fifth Act have done with theatre; taken 400 year old words, added some spices, a new perspective and created a modern classic exploring what it is to be a woman under social pressures both in Shakespeare’s time and in the modern day. Hopefully it will be a winning combination that all of Edinburgh will be loving as much as the ultimate Scottish classic with a twist: the deep-fried Mars bar.

Shakespeare’s Queens: She-Wolves and Serpents is at C Venues – C Eca until 25 August. For tickets and more information, visit www.edfringe.com or www.Cthefestival.com or for more about the show, visit www.shakespearesqueens.blogspot.com.

The Fifth Act presented Lady M. at C Eca – C Venues on 18 August but you can find out more about the production at www.lady-m.nl.