Football and elegancies
October 18, 2012
Our last week in the UK before setting off for the states saw us perform at St. Mary's School in Hull. Here, we gave four enjoyable performances to responsive audiences made up of local schools, and on the Wednesday afternoon, delivered a workshop.
Matt Sutton, proud son of the city that he is, delivered the workshop alongside us sporting the black and amber of Hull City AFC. Dharmesh and I had tagged along with him the night before to watch the club suffer an underserved loss at the hands of Blackpool, and, neutrals though we supposedly were, had developed a little of the Tiger spirit ourselves.
Whether it was partly as a result of this local pride, or simply because we were on form as practitioners, I don't know – but it was one of the most productive workshops we've given.
The students had not only understood the play (always a relief for us), but showed real flair and imagination in their responses to the challenges we set them. It reminded me that it's the contributions from the students that we work with that make each session unique. The best workshops are the ones in which they offer more than we do.
I understand that St. Mary's are building a new state-of-the-art theatre over the next year or so; judging by what we saw on Wednesday, it's a resource that certainly won't go to waste.
We spent the rest of the week performing at the fantastic Hull Truck theatre. The space is infinitely rewarding to play and our piece fit into its design perfectly. The staff, both front of house and back, gave us a warm welcome.
An idyllic afternoon off was spent walking around the picturesque old town and wandering through the Wilberforce House Museum. Larkin wrote that 'Hull has its own sudden elegancies' - I feel very lucky to have experienced more than a few of these during our brief visit.
by Ben Deery
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