Playhouse Issues Invite to Young Talent
West Yorkshire Playhouse is issuing an invitation to budding practitioners of the arts to take part in their new drama project for Leeds’ annual Light Night festival on Friday 9th October. The project, funded by a £22,900 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, is titled Leeds Routes. The opportunity to get involved is open to any performers, writers, film makers, dancers and artists aged between 14 and 25. All those interested in taking part are simply asked to go to a meeting at West Yorkshire Playhouse on Saturday 5 September at 2pm.
Light Night is a free annual event that takes place across the United Kingdom. In 2009, six cities will hold events that celebrate each of the cities’ individual histories and culture. In 2008, 50 venues in Leeds opened their doors to 47,000 recorded visits throughout the course of 70 different events for Light Night. This year, more venues and events have been added to the line up.
A West Yorkshire Playhouse press release on Leeds Routes reveals that performers will be split into four groups: “to explore and discover stories and characters from across Leeds. These historical tales of the city will be developed into a performance… taking place in locations throughout Leeds City Centre.”
The first meeting for the project will involve a series of introduction and performance exercises, followed by a journey across Leeds City Centre for inspiration to help develop performance ideas. The location for one of these visits is likely to be the Royal Armouries, according to the West Yorkshire Playhouse website. The website also contains details of free writing sessions for young writers aged 14-25, to create pieces of text for performance in Leeds Routes.
Project Manager for Leeds Routes, Aisha Khan, who recently won the BBC’s BANG (British Asian New Generation) Award for playwriting, has set up a facebook group dedicated to the event called “Leeds Routes”, which currently has 205 members.
For more details about Leeds Routes, visit http://www.wyp.org.uk/content/writing/lightnight.asp
If you would like to attend a writing session, email Aisha Khan on aisha.khan@wyp.org.uk or call 0113 213 7286.
– Vicky Ellis
