Back to School, Back to Rehearsals

People often say the first day of rehearsals for a new show is like the first day at school. It is perhaps fitting that as a new term begins for school children across Scotland, this week we begin rehearsals for our Scottish venue tour of Pondlife. This isn’t completely new territory- Pondlife is one of our best-loved and most well-travelled shows having done three Scottish schools tours, played at the Sydney Opera House, the New Victory Theatre (New York) and Auckland Arts Festival amongst others.
We are, however, welcoming actor Antony Strachan to the company for the first time to make his Catherine Wheels debut and take on the multitude of characters we meet in this one man show.

Those of you that have seen Pondlife before will remember a very simple set with the piece performed around you as you sat on the floor. This tour will see us playing in much bigger spaces than we have performed the show in before, the Brunton (Musselburgh), Eden Court (Inverness) and the macrobert (Stirling) amongst others and so our brilliant creative team including designer Karen Tennent, Sound Designer Danny Krass and Lighting Designer Simon Wilkinson have been working with Director Gill Robertson to reimagine the piece and create a full theatrical experience to fill these venues.
While this new version of Pondlife may look and feel different to that you have seen before, what remains very much the same is the moving and funny story of childhood friendship that makes it so special.

Schools Tours continue to be a hugely important part of what we do and we are especially proud that our first ever show, Martha is currently travelling the country as part of the inaugural Theatre in Schools Scotland initiative. Hannah Donaldson, who in 2013 toured North America with Lifeboat and could be seen in our production of The Voice Thief at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, takes on the title role of Martha. She is joined by Chris Alexander as the Goose. Chris has just returned from a European tour of White and this is his first schools tour with us. The company have already played at 12 primary schools and will visit 23 more before the tour finishes in October.

We hope this new term is off to a good start for you and that we will see you at one of our forthcoming Pondlife shows.

Full details of the tour can be found here.