English
繁體
简体
Yuko Cheung @ English Touring Theatre
9 September 2014
Free open air theatre performance amidst commercial complex under More London Free Festival
I started the placement in the English Touring Theatre (ETT) in mid-August 2014. My main duties include supporting the company’s forthcoming tour productions and its 21st anniversary celebration events.
The coming autumn production will be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. For the past few weeks, I participated in the rehearsal and production meetings and met the actors, creation and production team members. I got a glimpse on how ETT works with different venues to bring the plays to different parts of the U.K. I will also visit the first touring venue Sheffield Theatres very soon.
London is well known for its vibrancy and diversity in arts and culture. However, some other cities in U.K. face the problem of lack of theatre audiences. The ETT has initiated the National Touring Group (NTG), which is a consortium of major eight regional theatres and a producer, working together to produce and tour ambitious high quality, large scale drama to audiences across England, particularly to some geographic areas of low cultural participation. This visionary project not only aims at audience building in different cities, but also strengthening different venues with peer schemes promoting mutual sharing of knowledge in arts promotion. I am glad to join my colleagues to visit different venues in the Midlands to discuss the audience building and marketing strategies in which I did benefit a lot.
Besides supporting theatre productions, I also have the opportunity to engage in meetings with people from various organisations and know more the works of arts promotion in different aspects (E.G. Providing access performances for disabled audiences and new technologies involved). I will also work with my colleagues for participating in events hosted by other arts organisations in London. For instance, we are preparing for participation in TheatreCraft, which is an annual one day fair for young people aged 16 to 25 from all over the country to understand more about non-performing roles in theatre production.
During my stay in U.K., I also attended numerous arts and cultural events such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I am particularly impressed by the Unlimited Festival recently held at Southbank Centre, which is a six-day festival featuring works by disabled artists. The performances are all very impressive and the organiser has provided very support to disabled audiences who can truly enjoy the performances. Besides west end, there are lots of small theatres staging exciting works which I am going to explore in coming weeks.
Street performers are everywhere on the Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Meeting Cantonese opera performers on Royal Mile! They staged a performance introducing the characteristics of Cantonese opera during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival