A blog from Festival Director Michael Brazier:

I am six months into the job and its exactly twelve months to the day since I was appointed…I have never known time move so fast. There are forty-five days to go before we open.

In the past week, I’ve seen Sondheim and Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, a verbatim play about the Leveson Enquiry and a new musical with one singer and one pianist set in the 1950’s. A delicate miniature about regret and thwarted ambition. (Hope I won’t feel regret and thwarted ambition at the end of the festival!) Tonight: a new musical with a cast of twenty-one and a live band, set in achingly hip east London in 2012. Tomorrow it’s The Trojan Women and the musical Chess on Friday. The selectors have seen another seven productions in that time – plays, devised work, a site specific and grotesque fairy tales with a nod toward Shockheaded Peter.

This afternoon Tamara Harvey will run a workshop for actors and directors as part of the programme of workshops we deliver for our partner Ideas Tap. We are working with artists from Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, STOMP and with choreographer Lucy Hind on a series of workshops at Sheffield Theatres. They will create four short performance pieces with a hundred young artists and present their work on the final night of the festival.

I was asked recently ‘What exactly do you do?

Well…I budget. I write copy. I make funding applications. And punch the air when they are successful…I agree the catering and truck costs. I watch shows and give notes. And pray the weather will be good and the trains run on time. And ponder. Can we fit an audience of 120 people into a hotel room for a bit of site-specific. (No). Can we use the Cliff Lift for something. It seats ten. (Maybe). The last day of the festival is Good Friday…can we stage The Passion with 400 people on Scarborough’s South Beach with a day’s rehearsal? (It’s a thought). Amid all the planning, policy writing and the contracting, stuff can happen…within a few weeks of starting I got a ‘phone call to say there was a double booking of one of the rooms at the Spa Complex on the last day of the festival. The surprise booking was by a thousand scooter owners who will arrive for a party mid-afternoon. On scooters. It all got sorted and doesn’t affect the festival. But I am strangely excited about it. There we will be…and on the horizon will appear the cast of Quadrophenia. (The Arena Tour).

I am constantly struck by people’s generosity; their willingness to move their diary around to be at the festival and deliver workshops and share their knowledge. Associates and artists from the RSC, Paines Plough, Sheffield Theatres, Michael Grandage Company, Stage Entertainment, Stage Electrics, New Adventures, Stage One, The Young Vic, Equity, Spotlight and many more will be in Scarborough. I am building the programme each day. Our brilliant Selection Team will be there. The Professional Technical Team are appointed and will lead sixty students to make the festival happen. Noises Off Magazine will go to print seven times in the week with reviews, commentary, images and graphics. The Management Team are appointed to run the venues, box office and the workshops and help produce and curate exhibitions, the script library, the bookshop, internet café and other resources and events. 

I hope that we can give people time to really look at the workshop programme before choosing. If your ambition is to form a company and become an Artistic Director, then a workshop on budgeting and fundraising will be invaluable. You may not have a producer straight out of the blocks. (But you might meet one at the festival). You want to produce, sit in on an audition workshop. And think about a contracts and tour booking workshop. You want to act, be a lighting designer, a sound designer, stage manager…you want to go to drama school but not sure of the best course for you. RADA, BOVTS, Central, Mountview, LAMDA, Drama UK and many others will be there.

We will announce the workshop programme in early March. And we select the productions on 16 Feb and announce 2 days later.

Hope to see you in Scarborough. (Scooters optional).

44 and a half days to go…