TakeOver Festival 2015
Programme of events for York Theatre Royal’s annual festival curated by young people.
The official programme of shows for TakeOver 2015, an annual arts festival run in association with York Theatre Royal and running from Saturday 24 October to Sunday 1 November, has been announced.
Every year during TakeOver Festival, young people seize control of York Theatre Royal, taking charge of programming, preparing and producing a week of performances and activities. This year we’re having a TakeOver makeover: while York Theatre Royal is currently lodging at the National Railway Museum during its £4.1m refurbishment, the festival is following suit.
The festival team have asked every act to devise a piece that responded to and enriched the unique performance spaces of the National Railway Museum. Performances have been programmed throughout the museum – inside carriages, on bridges, and throughout the museum’s cavernous halls.
Kate Hunter, Public Events Manager at the National Railway Museum, said:
We’re very excited to be hosting this year’s TakeOver Festival at the National Railway Museum as part of our ongoing partnership with York Theatre Royal. Our staff have really enjoyed helping to mentor such a talented and enthusiastic group of young people, who have organised a fantastic programme inspired by the National Railway Museum and the wonderful items in the National Collection. We can’t wait to see their hard work pay off in October half term!
Leeds-based group Interplay Theatre’s show A Journey With Maude will be performed in the saloons and compartments of the Tri-Composite Carriage, one of the museum’s most treasured carriages. Adapted from the cult 1970s dark comedy Harold and Maude, the intensely intimate show will see Maude taking an audience of six on a time-travelling adventure through her extraordinary life.
HookHitch Theatre will be performing two shows over the festival: The Gentleman for Nowhere is based on a collection of railway-themed short stories partly written by Dickens, and was specially conceived for performance in the Gresley Buffet Car in the unique atmosphere of the museum’s Warehouse. In HookHitch’s Phantasmagoria, has-been Victorian entertainer Charles Alderdice attempts to retell Lewis Carroll’s darkest work, but starts to lose his grip on reality in a swirl of delusion and desperation, drawing audiences into his greatest fears and desires.
TakeOver’s Artistic Director Lizzy Whynes, a 22-year-old theatre practitioner, has crafted two performance pieces for the festival, both of them free to watch: Coal in the Garden is a post-war story of two sisters from the countryside whose imaginations run wild as they persuade their friend, an evacuee from the city, to stay living with them; and the Pigeon Party is a five-minute flash mob that pops up throughout the day across the museum, in which a group of defiant pigeons evade Ernie, the security guard.
Lizzy says about TakeOver Festival:
It’s fantastic that TakeOver Festival, which gives young people such an amazing opportunity to kickstart an artistic career, is forming part of the collaboration between the National Railway Museum and the theatre. It’s a first for the National Railway Museum and a first for TakeOver – they’ve never hosted an arts festival, and we’ve never taken over a museum.
None of the work we’re producing would have been possible without the constant inspiration of the museum’s collection and support of its staff. The Pigeon Party only came about after a conversation we had with a security guard at the museum about how difficult pigeons were to shoo away. We wanted to make him, the pigeons, and everything else in this brilliant museum part of the TakeOver story.
Award-winning theatre maker John Hinton is taking audiences on a whistle-stop musical excursion around some of the museum’s unusual artefacts, called The Great Train Songery; the tuneful tour blends comedy, audience interaction and a lurking sense of the unexpected. Local performance poet Henry Raby is presenting Train-spotting (not the film), a short piece on the Footbridge of the Great Hall about losing oneself in a hobby – in this case, the engrossing pastime of trainspotting.
TakeOver is producing two evening events during the week, in which audiences can relax with a drink from the museum café and experience the halls in unusual quiet. On Monday an immersive, secret cinema-style screening of the classic 1940s comedy/horror film Ghost Train will be held, in which live performers re-enact scenes from the film and treat the audience to synchronised sights, tastes and smells. A scratch night of TakeOver Shorts will take place on Tuesday evening, in which companies will perform 20-minute draft versions of their productions: the winning event, as voted for by audiences, will be commissioned for the TakeOver 2016 programme.
Four theatre workshops for young people have been arranged at the museum during TakeOver week. All Aboard!, in which 5- to 11-year-olds get the chance to create theatrical snapshots of railway life, will run for 50 minutes most mornings. In Suitcase Stories (aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds and running for a morning) and Mind the Gap (for those aged 13 to 17, running for a full day), participants will work from the museum’s own collections to create a short play, which they can perform to family and friends at the end of the workshop. And Interplay Theatre have produced the accessible and interactive A Journey With Maude Workshop to accompany their performance, aimed at young people aged 8 to 16.
Of Time and the Railway, a new film by artist Robert Davies, captures the entire train journey between Birmingham and Aberystwyth. Filmed from the driver’s cabin over the four seasons, it charts the many changes in landscape and scenery between the stations, and will run on loop in Station Hall throughout the festival week.
TakeOver audiences can get stuck in themselves with our Creation Stations, open all day throughout the week. In the Music, Story, Shadow, Art and Poetry Stations, there will be opportunities for museum visitors to create their own work of art and help produce TakeOver Festival.
Listings
A Journey With Maude
An Interplay Theatre production
Monday 26 October – Sunday 1 November
Times: 11.30, 12.15, 14.15, 15.00, 15.45
Location: Tri-Composite Carriage, Station Hall
Tickets: £5
The Great Train Songery
Created by John Hinton
Monday 26 October – Wednesday 28 October
Time: 12.00, 12.45, 14.00, 14.45
Location: Meet at the Warehouse entrance
Tickets: Pay what you can
Ghost Train
An immersive film screening
Monday 26 October
Time: 19.30 (bar and doors open 19.00)
Location: Station Hall, meet at the City Entrance of NRM
Tickets: £10 / £8 concessions
TakeOver Shorts
Scratch night to decide TakeOver 2016 programme
Tuesday 27 October
Time: 19.30 (bar and doors open 19.00)
Location: Station Hall, meet at the City Entrance of NRM
Tickets: £8 / £5.50 concessions
Phantasmagoria
A HookHitch Theatre production
Thursday 19 October – Saturday 31 October
Times: 12.30, 13.15, 14.30, 15.15
Location: Fruit Van, Platform 6, Station Hall
Tickets: £4
The Gentleman For Nowhere
A HookHitch Theatre production
Thursday 29 October – Saturday 31 October
Times: 16.30
Location: Gresley Buffet Car, Warehouse
Tickets: £4
Free events
Coal in the Garden
Directed by the festival’s Artistic Director Lizzy Whynes
Saturday 24 October, Sunday 25 October, Tuesday 27 October, Thursday 29 October, Saturday 31 October, Sunday 1 November
Times: 15.00
Location: The Garden, Great Hall
Pigeon Party
A pop-up dance event
Saturday 24 October, Monday 26 October, Wednesday 28 October, Friday 30 October
Times: Throughout the day
Location: Across the National Railway Museum
Train-Spotting (Not the Film)
Spoken-word piece by Henry Raby
Wednesday 28 October and Saturday 31 October
Time: Several times per hour from 12.00–15.30 (5-minute running time)
Location: Learning Platform, meet at the NRM Box Office
Of Time and the Railway
A film by Robert Davies
Saturday 24 October – Sunday 1 November
Time: On loop throughout the day
Location: Station Hall
Creation Stations (Story Station, Music Station, Shadow Station, Poetry Station, Art Station)
Areas for artists, performers and audience members to get creative
Saturday 24 October – Sunday 1 November
Time: Open throughout the day
Location: Station Hall and Great Hall
Workshops
All Aboard!
50-minute workshop for ages 5 to 11
Monday 26 October – Sunday 1 November
Times: 11.00–11.50 (additional workshops on Monday 26 and Saturday 31 October will start at 14.00)
Location: Learning Platform, meet at the NRM Box Office
Tickets: £5
Suitcase Stories
Morning workshop for ages 8 to 12
Tuesday 27 October
Times: 10.30–13.30
Location: Learning Platform, meet at the NRM Box Office
Tickets: £10
A Journey With Maude Workshop
90-minute accessible workshop run by Interplay Theatre, for ages 8 to 16
Tuesday 27 October
Times: 16.30–18.00
Location: Learning Platform, meet at the NRM Box Office
Tickets: £5
Mind the Gap
All-day workshop for ages 13 to 17
Friday 30 October
Times: 11.00–16.30
Location: Learning Platform, meet at the NRM Box Office
Tickets: £15