Catching up!

The week has flown by with the first Level 2 productions of 2010 going on in the theatre - a really impressive effort from the Theatre Arts team with particularly outstanding performances from Bianca Barrett and Chantal Koning.

Elsewhere things are moving forward. The police have been in contact to confirm that they'll continue to support the development of the TIE piece we performed at the community safety day last week. This is great news and means a bit of useful pocket money for the hard working students involved. By the end of the week we were starting to get enquiries from interested schools and hopefully we'll be able to put together a mini tour from April onwards.

We've also started the first recruiting workshops for Richmond Theatre's 110 project with two workshops at Waldegrave School last Monday. The year 9 and 10 students we met were great and really responsive to the work. The idea is to scout for ten young researchers from the borough over the next month or so and then begin to collect interviews and stories from mid-April, to shape into the final play, which we'd like to start rehearsing from early June. We could have recruited an entire team from this school, but with only one or two places on the team available for each visit, the selection process is clearly going to be very tough. Still we came away uplifted and sensing that if we cast well we could end up working with some really talented young people

On Wednesday I caught up with Stef, for the first time since returning from Bosnia (she's been busy transferring her production of Yard Gal into the Deptford Albany.) She's begun working the Sarajevo Marlboro' stories with the Youth Arts students at The Oval House - in the hope of creating an initial scratched draft. She also has had a very positive meeting with Sean Holmes at the Lyric, Hammersmith and there maybe some possibilities for developing the work there.

Last night a meeting with Jorge and Gary to touch base on the progress of the 400th Birthday project. A shape for the day is beginning to emerge and the need now is to make sure as ideas, promises and new proposals come on board that Level 3 hold it together and keep all the communication channels open. Jayne led a really good power point presentation though which helped reassure both the house and me that things are on track and gearing up for a really well managed and executed event on May 23rd.

We ended the week with another interview day as we try to put in place the pathway companies for 2010. There were some really interesting candidates today and we've been able to make several offers, which meant a very positive week ended on the highest of notes with us looking optimistically towards the future.

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