National Youth Theatre announces promenade show with 1000 cast members in response to climate crisis

The National Youth Theatre (NYT) has unveiled a brand new project in response to the climate crisis.

Launching virtually in May and expected to take place over the next few years, the project, entitled MELT, will culminate in an outdoor promenade piece featuring a cast of over 1000 in 2021/22. The piece will be performed in cities and sites across the English east coast, with dates and locations to be revealed.

An initial performance project will take place online on 20 June 2020 – the longest day of the year. This streamed event will feature a cast of 200 and is set to explore the impact of flooding on coastal areas in recent years.

The NYT will be working in collaboration with leading climate scientists from the University of Hull to present the content for the project. The MELT initiative is led by the company's artistic director Paul Roseby, along with Zoe Lafferty, associate director of The Freedom Theatre, Palestine and Joel Scott, artistic director at Goat and Monkey and associate artist with Punchdrunk.

Roseby said: "I hate to be the voice of doom at a time when we're all stuck in the world of Zoom and isolation but we can not let our creative hearts and minds ignore the critical issue that is the Climate Crisis. A year on from Extinction Rebellion and its resulting awareness and division, MELT will seek to galvanize hundreds of Britain's best young creative voices from across the UK to animate a series of stories founded in scientific fact but told in imaginative bold."