My last production was Nick Dear’s poignant play Lunch in Venice. It went very well and was incredibly enjoyable to direct.

And I was delighted when three of my excellent cast were nominated for awards at the Elmbridge Drama Festival. No mean feat since there were over 50 young people performing in that festival!

This year I’m directing John Godber’s classic classroom comedy Teechers.

I have a cast of 23 young people and had to think hard about how I was going to stage the play.

The difficult thing with finding plays for youth theatre is there are so few suitable ones with large numbers of parts. And even then, most of the parts will be minor walk-ons which doesn’t give a lot for the young people playing them to do for the three months or so of Sunday afternoons spent rehearsing the play.

It’s a challenge.

I chose Teechers simply because although the play was written for three actors, it is highly adaptable for any number of them – though admittedly, I would have struggled to use more than 30 young people!

It is a very popular play and it’s highly probable there’s a production of it being performed right now as I write (and indeed as you read) somewhere in the world.

It was written back in 1987 and to be honest has dated a bit, so we’ve had to change some of the language and references to make it more current for my cast.

Cookery classes are now ‘food tech’ . O’ Levels are GSCEs, and the third year is now of course Yr9. We’ve also had fun with some of the northern phrases that don’t mean anything to us: ‘twagging it’, for example.

We’ve approached the text as a team, all pitching in when we felt a word or phrase needed to be changed.

Last week we finished blocking, and with (my) 41 french* scenes, it’s been pretty manic! This Sunday, I have asked the cast to come in school uniform so I can shoot some publicity shots, so should be a laugh!

For me, it’s about the young people involved. I need to make sure they are happy and have fun.

The main thing I am doing with this production is to have all 23 actors on stage all the time. We are presenting the play as part of a double bill, since Teechers is a short play, so we’ll perform both acts without an interval.

Normally, when I’ve seen other productions done with large casts, some of the actors play the teachers.

But I wanted to do this production differently and so I am having the all actors play pupils dressed in school uniform, with some of the pupils then acting at times as teachers by simply putting on a jacket and grabbing a briefcase, if you see what I mean.

This means I can keep everyone involved so if they are not acting as a teacher in a particular scene, then they’ll be acting as pupil in the class, etc.

I must admit, keeping all the young people in the cast focused is hard at times, but they seem to be enjoying the process.

Oh, and my set consists of 16 yards of yet to be acquired cloth, 16 broom handles to hang it all from, and 23 brown plastic chairs in a semi-circle.

Interesting, to say the least, lol.

Cast:

Adam Amin
Alex Alderson
Annabel Smith
Chloe Gay
Emily Doyle
Emma Heaton
Emma King
Georgie Palmer
Jack Simpson
Joe Welland
Lara Henderson
Luke Dowding
Mark Forrest
Matt Knight
Natalie Nanda
Nicola Legg
Pete Williams
Ryan McAndrew
Sherice Griffiths
Sophie Lee
Tom Addy
Toni Doncaster
Wesley Stephenson

Teechers (and Charles Way’s Playing From The Heart) will be performed 10-12 December 2009 at the Riverside Arts Centre in Lower Sunbury.

I’ll keep you updated on our progress.

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*A ‘French Scene’ is a numbered division of a scene or act in which a major character/s enters or exits. Apparently this is how french drama is written. I always divide up any play I am directing in to french scenes and so helping with the blocking/rehearsing. The actors and I then have the play broken down into small chunks and can then work on it in a much easier fashion.