This Week at NYT | NYT Ambassadors, ShortFLIX and the REP Season!
Time flies at NYT, it’s now just under a week until our REP Season kicks of Ambassadors Theatre! Here’s your weekly run down of what we’ve been up to this week:
REP Season
This week it was Jekyll and Hyde’s turn to tech at Ambassadors Theatre. Our REP Company and production team have been hard at work putting the final touches on both of these exciting new versions of literary classics. Don’t forget you can keep up to date with the REP Company on twitter @NYTREPCompany and on our Instagram where they’ll be doing regular takeovers!
In a radical reimagining by Evan Placey, see Jekyll and Hyde like you’ve never seen it before. Listen to the women of Jekyll and Hyde give their thoughts on this new take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s story:
Be an NYT Ambassador
Applications are now open for NYT Company Members to work as an Ambassador on our 2018 Auditions and Backstage Interviews National Tour!
Apply to be an NYT Auditions or Backstage Interviews Ambassador!
The role of Ambassador is of vital importance and our audition process can't work without you.
Ambassadors are present at audition and backstage interview days to assist the Auditioner or Interviewer, ensuring things run smoothly and putting applicants at ease. To apply to be an Ambassador and sign up for a training day, head over to the Members Board!
ShortFLIX
Creative England this week announced plans to continue their collaboration with NYT and global broadcaster Sky on the short film initiative SHORTFLIX. With applications due to open again this autumn, the programme will open its doors to the UK’s undiscovered and ambitious filmmaking talent from diverse backgrounds with a story to tell about their community, heritage and identity, giving them the opportunity to make their first short film.
ShortFLIX first launched in March 2017, and one of this year’s winners is NYT Member Dior Clarke, who took part in Playing Up in 2016. Dior and Blain Ho-Shing’s film ‘Batty Boy’ is an uncompromising take on black gay culture unmasked, set against homophobia and dancehall music: “They say burn them, we say salute them.”. Each winning project will be made into a short film for Sky Arts with a budget of £10,000 each.
Timeless by Rikki Beadle Blair
Last Friday, NYT members performed in a sharing of Rikki Beadle Blair’s R&D project ‘Timeless’ at our Holloway Road rehearsal rooms. The work was developed over the course of two weeks through discussions and work shopping with Rikki and a dedicated group of NYT members.
Love’s epic legacy of LGBT diversity. As long as we have been human we have been diverse. Timeless is an exploration of LGBT identities throughout recorded history, excavating and examining the the clues and characters that still live and breathe within the legacies of drama, music and literature and art.
Check out this shot by Andy McCredie of the dress rehearsal.
NYT in Hong Kong
Our Producer Brian is over in Hong Kong this week as part of the first creative trip in preparation for the NYT's staging of FLOOD in 2018.
Poignant, thoughtful and hauntingly beautiful, Flood sees a cast of 15 to 20 young people aged 14 - 25 create an epic modern-day tale of salvation. A bold and visceral telling of what happens when land turns to water, the performance combines elements of contemporary physical theatre, choral speaking, shadow play, music and voice, object manipulation and video imagery.
Alumni News
Congratulations to NYT Alumni Sope Dirisu and Hannah Morrish who had their press night for Coriolanus at the Royal Shakespeare Company last night.
Dirisu is a “formidable stage-filling presence” – ★★★★ The Stage
Photo: Helen Maybanks
James Graham's new play Labour of Love, featuring Rachael Stirling and Susan Wokoma, both NYT Alumni, is about to open at the Noel Coward Theatre. Susan is currently also appearing in a brand new comedy on Dave called Porters.
Have a read of this great feature on Susan in the Guardian this week.
Photo: Marc Brenner
NYT Alumnus Luke Barnes's new play, No one will tell me how to start a revolution, opened yesterday at the Hampstead Theatre. Barnes's Hampstead debut paints a captivating, lively and poignant portrait of the pressures of being a teenager and the fight for acceptance – irrespective of the cards you’ve been dealt.
NYT REP Alumnus Ragevan Vasan is in the new film Daphne, which opens next week!
And finally, Boudica at the Globe, is going from strength to strength with NYT Alumna Gina McKee playing the lead!
"Gina McKee reigns supreme" – ★★★★ Guardian
