Our Next Show
The Untold Lives of Private Godfrey
Premiere in Quay Arts, Newport
on August 2nd and 3rd at 7:30pm & on August 4th at 6:00pm
Theatre Reviva! Responds to
The Isle of Wight being an area of Multiple Deprivation
Arts Council England [ACE] assigns the Isle of Wight a ‘Priority Place’ status
THERE’S A TWOFOLD PROBLEM
- Young people on the Isle of Wight, trying to start a career in the Creative Arts, are struggling to find ways to step onto the first rung of the employment ladder. They lack local opportunities that would help them achieve the standards, expertise and attitudes required for professional work.
- More experienced individuals, reviving their aims to work in the creative, cultural and performing arts, are also struggling to find ways to step onto the employment ladder.
THE AGENT for CHANGE
Theatre Reviva! is changing that with Advance Start: a solution to the local social challenges of employment in the cultural sector on the Isle of Wight: We run post-school or college and adult hands-on social, cultural, and paid working experience (economic) initiatives.
These initiatives include performing arts productions, workshops, advanced training sessions, improvisation work, Shakespeare and new-work texts – and paid professional roles. The vital topics dealt with are communication skills, advanced acting skills, technical and stage management skills; (all at professional levels that participants really need).
Distinctively, Theatre Reviva! delivers this through a Mentoring approach, whereby older professionals are linked to younger participants as they travel through the Advance Start experience.
OUTCOMES
Example: Two IOW school leavers. They graduated from Advance Start, completed their first paid professional jobs with us and their developed skills, attitudes and newly found confidence, have taken them on to fresh career opportunities. Success!
WHY
Why is Theatre Reviva! doing this? To add value to the cultural performing life of the Island and bring on the development of local performers and backstage crew, helping them enter the labour market both on and off the Island. Because the Isle of Wight is classed as an area of economic and cultural deprivation, it’s in the UK Index of Multiple Deprivation; and it’s one of the 11 Priority Places selected by ACE in the South West of the country that need cultural support – But it’s not yet reaching the people who need it! And I’m angry that Arts and Drama in education is still being cut back and suffering from cuts in local and central government funding. All short-sighted precedents, that signal the arts and humanities are dispensable – impacting the cultural benefits, threatening jobs, creative outlets, economics, health, and wellbeing. That needs to change…
WHO
Who are we trying to help? We want to transform the lives of people who want jobs in the cultural economy of this Island and are struggling to attain the standards required.
HOW
How are we doing this?
(a) By running Advance Start workshops for cohorts of participants, which include Stage Management skills, Lighting, Sound, Costume and Design options, in parallel with Drama (building resilience with Acting skills and techniques, Text interpretation, Movement, Voice, Rehearsal etiquette, and working up CVs and photos, to help sell participants to their next employer).
(b) By taking a Mentoring approach, where older professionals are linked to younger participants as they travel through the Advance Start experience.
(c) By each cohort working towards a public Theatre Production – where participants are employed as active members of the production team, whether backstage or onstage, earning a wage during the life of the production.
APPLYING NEW CONFIDENCE AND SKILLS
On graduation from Advance Start, participants can apply their enhanced knowledge and confidence in their abilities in presentation skills, interview skills and audition & performance and technical skills, into fresh professional job applications (on-line or in-person).
Cohort EMPLOYMENT 2024
Play: Who were you before, Private Godfrey? ‘new writing’ by Nic Ridley – x 4 actors/2 backstage staff on the IoW.
Play: Journeys End by RC Sherriff – x 4 actors/2 backstage staff on the IoW + SE England tour.
Plays: An evening of 5 Short plays by ‘New writers’– x 6 actors/2 backstage staff required on the IoW.
LONG TERM Plans
Drama: Shakespeare’s MACBETH
Musical: GODSPEL
A devised Community-Based Production
WHAT
What benefits are achieved? I’ve discussed this with current students and young people who are looking for outlets for their creativity. Advanced Start understands how education in the Arts helps people aspire to and achieve more in their lives. There are success stories to tell. We provide a solution to the local social and economic cultural challenges on the IOW by
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- Bridging the gap between learning and the experience of doing things professionally, particularly in Theatre
- Offering Backstage work/ Sound & Lighting technical skills/Costuming/Music/Acting – all enabling a host of latent skills to bloom and flourish
- By building confidence, developing resilience, extending communication skills and stabilizing mental health in our participants
- By helping participants to communicate their own experiences. The Performing Arts in particular helps people appreciate and understand other people’s perspectives, through understanding the creative disciplines involved and interpreting other roles
- Facilitating participants onto the first rungs of a career in the performing Arts.
WHO is THEATRE REVIVA! cic?
Theatre Reviva! is a Community Interest Company, (a not-for-profit company), helmed by Artistic Director Graham Pountney, who holds a Diploma in Creative Producing and is a Fellow of the School of Social Enterprise. Graham has founded, and been a Director of, three Theatre Companies over the last 30 years, and co-run two vocational Dance and Drama schools. He is a working Producer, Actor and Theatre Director and a partner in Talking Trade Communications, a presentations skills and communications organisation. He brings to Advanced Start the experience of a 50 year career in the performing Arts.
YOU
If you believe in the power of the creative and performing Arts to entertain, to change lives, to develop social skills, to build personal confidence in communicating, to break down barriers, to build bridges of understanding between people, to contribute to the economy – then we need your support to help fund our work in this area of deprivation. Join us in this valuable and necessary cause. Your support will drive forward this initiative and produce beneficial change in so many ways.
THANK YOU – Just click the link below.
Crowdfunding to Support Advanced Start
– an 8 week pilot programme to help participants get jobs in the Performing Arts, with a job at the end – on JustGiving
Coming to the South East, Kent and Norfolk in October/November 2024
This year we will be supporting two Veterans and Armed Forces charities: SSAFA – the Soldiers Sailors Airmen & Women’s Families Association, and the British Legion: because it’s the 80th Anniversary of D-Day and the 110th Anniversary of the start of WW1.
JOURNEY’S END
– the WW1 play –
JOURNEY’S END
R.C. Sherriff’s anti-war classic JOURNEY’S END is an amazing play.
Set in an extraordinarily realistic frontline dug-out during the First World War, the story plays out over four days in March 1918, as five British Officers wait for an upcoming attack. Read more…
Who Are We?
We’re a young, professional Theatre Company from Ryde, Isle of Wight.
We serve the local area with revivals of popular, entertaining and thought-provoking theatre!
We use local talent back-stage and on-stage and we’re bringing back into the community an opportunity for audiences to enjoy seasonal, affordable theatre productions.
Come and see our exciting shows!
Where Are We: Our Venues
Minghella Theatre, Quay Arts, Isle of Wight
Esher Theatre, Surrey
Apollo Theatre, Newport, Isle of Wight
Leatherhead Theatre, Leatherhead, Surrey
Our Vision
We are reviving seasonal theatre productions in the Isle of Wight, Surrey and the south of England because we passionately believe in entertaining local audiences, at affordable prices.
We present classic and culturally significant plays – as well as fun, poignant and diverting entertainments.
We are planning to present major shows on schools’ English and Drama curricula – and we’ll be running Technical Skills Workshops for young people in association with Theatrical Youth Training (TYT).
Our productions are always ambitious, popular and often thought-provoking.
Forthcoming Shows
After All These Years
The Tabard Theatre
Turnham Green,
Chiswick
7th to 24th February 2024
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Graham Pountney
Graham is a Ryde resident, an actor, director, producer and communications skills coach. He grew up in West Byfleet and East Horsley, raised a family in Stoke d’Abernon and Leatherhead and now lives in Ryde, Isle of Wight with his wife Suki Turner.
With 45 years in the performing media his career has encompassed Weekly Rep and Repetory Theatre in the UK and International touring, working with the Royal National Theatre and in London’s West End.
He founded the British Actors Theatre Company in the late 1980s and was a founder and director of The Original Shakespeare Company in the 1990s performing before Her Majesty the Queen in the opening ceremony of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
Graham was recently the Associate Artistic Director of the Leatherhead Theatre Rep Company. He has been creating, producing and directing plays, films, workshops, radio programmes and fundraising ‘edutainments’ for many years and continues to work as an actor exploring new characters, with credits in popular TV series (eg Howards Way, Life Begins, New Tricks, Hustle, etc).
