Theatre is Live and kicking for 2009

By Nigel Powlson

SHAKESPEARE, Dickens and an outdoor performance of Peer Gynt on the newest arts stage in the city are all part of Derby Live's theatrical plans for 2009.

Responsible for producing home-grown theatre in the city and backed by Arts Council cash, Derby Live has already backed new works by locally-based professional theatre companies but has now announced its first full season.

Derby Live director Peter Ireson says: "This is the first time we have been able to have a season with the full Derby Live programme in there. So it's an exciting thing for us."

From February Derby Live will be "moving up to the next level" with its production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

"It's our first totally in- house show so it's very important," says Peter.

Much Ado About Nothing (pictured) will be directed by Derby Live's artistic producer Pete Meakin and will feature Derby's own Steven Blakeley, who plays Heartbeat's PC Geoff Younger, and Lizzie Winkler, who finishes a seasonal run at The Guildhall tomorrow in Red Earth's Cinderella's Sisters.

Pete says: "This is a fresh beginning in terms of seeing produced, subsidised theatre coming back to Derby. We wanted to do a Shakespeare as we still believe he has massive relevance and popularity today.

"In terms of home-produced shows we don't want to tackle ones that are readily available or which have had significant exposure in the region over the years. I mean the Educating Ritas of this world as they have been well seen and are readily available.

"Even when it comes to Shakespeare we won't do Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth. I can't remember a professional production of Much Ado About Nothing in Derby which is another reason to do it. And future Shakespeares we do will be of similar quality but also of similar rarity in terms of Derby's exposure to them."

Derby Live's Youth Theatre production in April will be Charles Dickens' classic tale Nicholas Nickelby.

There are 90 young people in the Youth Theatre who will take part in the show at The Guildhall Theatre with Derby professional group Big Adventures responsible for dramatising the story.

"We wanted to demonstrate a commitment to the theatre ecology of Derby and Derbyshire," says Pete. "So we have given the artistic leadership to a group that has been around in Derby for 11 years now and which has done some great theatre and which has been straining at the leash to be able to do this kind of thing."

Derby writer Laura Lomas' gritty tale Wasteland will be staged from the end of April as a co-production between Derby Live and New Perspectives Theatre Company.

"Laura is a former Youth Theatre member but we didn't know she could write," says Pete. "She's been doing well with the East Midlands Theatre Writing Partnership. New Perspectives Theatre believed Laura's play Homeland was ready for a national tour, so we said 'we want to launch it in Derby'. Laura is cock-a-hoop that her first professional work will start in Derby."

Another Derby writer, Tim Elgood, is responsible for the rock musical The Pros, The Cons and a Screw which will be staged in May and June.

"I saw Tim's first play at a hotel in Buxton and his second at the Fishpond in Matlock and I thought then what a good writer," says Pete.

"When I was at Derby Playhouse one of the first things I did was get Tim in there and he has built up this massive Derby reputation. Mark Clements (former Playhouse artistic director) commissioned him to write a musical set in a prison and Tim went round the country researching and came up with this terrific script. It won a major award but has still never been staged."

The season concludes with the Derby Live Community Theatre production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt which will be staged outdoors at the newly-built Cathedral Green performance space.

"We want to use outdoor spaces," says Peter. "It's a big challenge as it has not even been finished yet. But we want to take theatre out into new and surprising spaces. Cathedral Green will be like a mini Minack, a unique environment. We have ideas to make it almost like an Elizabethan affair with maybe a craft fair or farmers' market down there. Anything outside is a big gamble but it's also very exciting."

"In many ways it's absolutely stupid doing a community theatre production of Peer Gynt," laughs Pete. "We take people of all backgrounds, experiences, ages and confront them with the highest artistic challenges.

"In its entirety it's a four-hour epic that Ibsen never meant to be staged. He called it a dramatic poem. But Peter Roberts, a fantastic writer, has done an adaptation that is a stormer.

"It will have a cast of 100 or more and music that will be specially composed. "The auditions will be in February. And anybody can be involved."