Yesterday evening we officially launched our exciting new project, 12 Tiny Plays - a selection of playscripts for young children and their grownups to perform at home through the month of December.
The project is funded by Arts Council England, The Library Presents, The Spark Arts for Children and The Body Factory. We are very grateful indeed.
As well as commissioning 12 writers to create playscripts about the diverse activities which happen through the Winter months, we are also turning some of them into audio dramas, creating ‘design pdfs’ to inspire families to create their own sets and dramatic (safe) lighting effects, and creating one script especially for youth theatres. There will be plays about snowflakes, Santa, Chanukah, Diwali, King Arthur losing his presents, and many more! It’s definitely going to be an exciting December here at Star Ship Fly High!
The best thing about this project (other than, hopefully, the joy, giggles, and laughter it will bring to families who might not be able to get to the theatre for their usual dose of Festive Fun) is that we are working with over 30 different creative freelancers. Here (only some!) of them are…
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Although we’re not offering them anywhere near enough money to sustain them for more than a day or two of work (we’re a tiny company with no core funding) we hope that, during this bleak bleak time for our beleaguered sector, this will be a vote of confidence, an encouragement to keep going, a tiny moment of creative expression and support. As one of our writers, Lisa Parry, says: “The crisis facing our industry is utterly heart-breaking, even more so as we enter a time where theatres are usually packed with children experiencing the magic of a live performance. To be able to provide them with a bit of fairy dust through a script for them to perform at home has been truly soul nourishing and a powerful reminder of the resilience of theatre.”
Our full rosta of writers is: Hannah Khalil, Helen Eastman, Lisa Parry, Lucy Hayward, Andrew Barnett Jones, Shamser Sinha, Katie Redford, Lucy Sheen, Sumerah Srivastav, Joseph Winer, Martin Lamb and Rachel Barnett-Jones. We will release details of our other amazing freelance creative team over the next few weeks.
We will be launching the scripts at the beginning of December and can’t wait to share them with the world! Watch this space for future announcements …
We are currently looking for some Project Champions, people who will support our project and help it to reach as many people as possible. If you’d be interested in this role then please drop us a line at flyhighstories@gmail.com