Viv Hardwick talks to Anna Disley about turning books into a spectacular project for youngsters

A GRANT of £264,000 from the Arts Council will ensure that the North-East, and County Durham in particular, will enjoy another three years of touring children’s theatre from Newcastle-based New Writing North.

Building on the success of My Granny is a Pirate and The Worst Princess being adapted from book to stage in the past two years, this year will see a major tour of Gateshead-based Simon Bartrum’s Man on the Moon.

“This is a hugely popular book by a Gateshead-based writer and illustrator and Simon will be involved in the creative development and sit in rehearsals,” says producer/commissioner Anna Disley.

“We went for this book because the illustrations are so vivid and I’ve read the book to my kids and they love it. And so have other people in our office and the central conceit is that Bob is a normal bloke who gets up and has his breakfast and goes to work on the moon, and then goes home. It’s a sort of living by routine where he tidies up the moon and vacuums it and doesn’t believe that aliens exist. But we, the readers, know that aliens do exist because we see them in the fantastic illustrations and kids love the fact that they can see things that the protagonists can’t.

“Also the past two years, the theme is quite nice that we’re featuring space and astronauts and the kind of thing that kids love. The fact that it’s a writer from the North-East is an added bonus,” she says.

Zoe Cooper, who is studying for a Phd in creative writer at Newcastle University, is adapting the book and created Nativities for Newcastle’s Live Theatre and also has a commission for the Old Vic Theatre.

“She has a good track record of getting work produced, but has never worked with children this young (in the region of three to seven years). We’re really impressed with her approach to how she would go about adapting the book,” she says.

Newcastle-based sound artist Calum Howard will perform in the show and help write the music. Matthew Smith will play the part of Bob in the show. He is an actor and film-maker based in Londo,n who is originally from Cramlington.

Claire Tustin, an early years expert, will be musical director and will also perform in the show. She works at Sage Gateshead as a singer, songwriter, performer and workshop leader.

New Writing North don’t think it is imposing on the territory of Darlington-based Theatre Hullaballo, one of the country’s top producers of children’s theatre.

“Well, I’ve talked to Hullabloo about this process and I don’t think you can tread on anyone’s toes in the North-East because there isn’t a lot of children’s theatre produced, and particularly touring around the region. The point of the project is to make the piece for places that places that aren’t theatre venues, like libraries and don’t get high quality theatre very often. This means there’s no lighting requirement because the idea is ‘get it in a van’, but it is still going to look amazing. We are hoping to complement what Hullabaloo do because we do need more work in this area. We want the best offer rather than replicating what each other does,” says Disley.

New Writing North organises Durham’s popular book festival and launched the theatre programme because it took book adaptations out to areas of County Durham which don’t normally send representatives or youngsters to the event. “County Durham will be a major part of the tour, but we will also have a Man in the Moon event.

This week the show is being created for a first draft and allow rehearsals to get underway. Disley says the £264,000 funding for three years work also required that NWN had to match some of this amount because there are plans for writers in residence, workshops and youth theatre projects to encourage venues to continue programming theatre performances.

“We also have to raise the confidence of promoters in certain community venues to raise their own funding and programme their own performing arts work. Over three years this is quite a large project and we’re hoping to make a bit of a change to these venues as well as building an audience for this kind of work. Around 50 per cent of our audiences so far had not attended a professional performing arts performance before. The total is to raise £340,000 and that’s not necessarily going to be easy,” says Disley.

The tour is due to start on September 26 until October 31 and will open at Sage Gateshead.

“There’s a lot on my shoulders in terms of raising the money and making this all happen, but this funding will allow us to buy in the services of a brilliant associate producer called Sarah Churlish, who does a lot of the liaison work because this is a major new project for New Writing North,” she says.

Projects two and three are already under consideration and NWN will be consulting with youngsters in the region about the kind of books they’d like to see put on stage.

“This is all about what grabs us and what we can achieve with a maximum of four actors in each production. They do tend to be actors who are really good at music or musicians who like acting.”