Village voices

CLOSING post offices, an ageing population and the threat of second home buyers forcing out country-raised youngsters... all current concerns in the village communities of England and an ideal study ground for the Alnwick-based Northumberland Theatre Company (NTC).

“All of the above reasons led us to commission A Village Life by Mary Cooper who was a writer we wanted to work with.

She went around the villages talking to people about rural life and came up with the idea of a woman returning to a country area where she’d enjoyed holidays as a child, but when she gets there she finds things have changed,” explains Gillian Hambleton, NTC artistic director, about a play which shows an elderly couple coming to terms with organising an entry into The Best Village competition for the fictional community of Aldale.

Cooper has come up with a plot involving a cast of five with Sandra Hunt and Nigel Collins playing the elderly couple Margaret and Colin with actors Gemma Clough and William Reay, both from Newcastle, and Nicola Welburn playing a range of other characters.

“It’s very much about people and relationships at the centre of the story and it’s not just about people in their Sixties, although a lot of our audience will identify with this,” explains Hambleton who is aware that NTC sells tickets on its reputation of touring the North- East since 1978.

“People will always come along to see out shows as long as the cast don’t take their clothes off and don’t swear,” jokes the artistic director.

Touring has increased by 27 per cent with bookings stretching outside the North- East to places like East Anglia.

“We’ve always had to be very flexible as a result of using a variety of village halls. We have to build a set, for example, that can cope with the low ceiling at Bamburgh where the cast are in danger of banging their heads if they stand on something,” she says.

NTC is not just keeping the small-scale circuit alive in the countryside. For the past seven years the company has hosted a scheme called InterACT which mentors the North-East’s budding actors, directors, stage managers and designers.

“We found that a lot of young people felt they had to go down to London to get work. So our InterACT scheme aims to help people who train or live within the region and set them up to get work regionally and elsewhere,” says Hambleton about NTC getting funding from Arts Council North East.

"MORE than 60 per cent of the people who were in the first years of this scheme are still working in the business and some of them are still in the region. One of the successes is a designer who was on the first training course, Michelle Huitson, becoming our resident designer and also on the management team. We’ve just won a national training award as well as a North-East training award. And that was a big deal for us because we were competing with people like the police force and Nissan. The scheme is unique running out of Northumberland and there is nothing similar to it in the whole country,” she adds.

International performers have told NTC they’d like to see similar schemes around the country, Hambleton says of the project which takes in Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, Cumbria, Cleveland and Durham. “This year we have eight trainees: five actors, a designer, a director and a stage manager. Obviously , it depends on financing and money we get from the Arts Council. We have had money from Northern Rock Foundation which has just about come to an end. So we’re seeking additional funding in future, otherwise it isn’t going to happen. The trainees go off to placement for six months of the year including ourselves, Northern Stage, Forest Forge down in Hampshire and Southampton. Hopefully they gain a touring experience as well and come back here for master classes and, at the moment, the eight are preparing to do a show called FourPlay because it is four plays. They will open in Alnwick for two nights in April and then go to Northern Stage, Scarborough and the Customs House in South Shields.

“We have always, as a company, nurtured new talent and I’ve always been interested in training and new directors and actors and this just puts it on a formalised basis and ensures that trainees are paid a little money to do it. It is an apprenticeship and we tell people ‘you are learning your craft’,” says Hambleton who reckons it costs NTC £50,000 to tour each show.

NTC itself has funding until 2011 and she admits the company don’t know what happens after that.

“The Arts Council don’t know and it won’t be told until next autumn. It’s very difficult, but you have to go ahead on the basis of what you do is excellent and should not be lost,” she says.

■ A Village Life tour dates: March 2, Middlesbrough Town Hall Crypt; March 3, Bishop Auckland Town Hall; March 9, Danby Village Hall, North Yorkshire.