Time to bring North East voices onto Newcastle stage
The new Artistic Director of Newcastle's Northern Stage says she wants to use her position to showcase local talent
Last updated 30th Sep 2021
The new artistic director of Newcastle's Northern Stage theatre says she's determined to use her position to showcase more local talent.
Natalie Ibu is directing her first show at the theatre - a production of the Jim Cartwright play Road, transposed to the North East.
Natalie tells us what she's hoping to achieve in her role here:
"What's really important to me in this role is that we're making work for this place.
"It felt like the play, set traditionally in Lancashire, had lots of similarities to the North East, so it didn't require us to really change the narrative, but really wanted to ground it as being 'of' this place."
Well the cast and crew of Road headed to Blyth recently, to learn more about the area and explore why the play has so many similarities with the region.
"It's a play about poverty, and the ways in which communities have been abandoned, that feels sadly so relevant when we think about Marcus Rashford and the Free School Meals campaign and just the ways in which foodbanks... and the way so many families are living on the poverty line.
"It's (also) a play about community and neighbouring, and hope and grief and living."
Ryan Nolan - who's from Newcastle - is one of the cast, and tells us what he hopes this play, and following pieces, will do:
"Show people's stories that maybe have not been shown before, we want to give visibility to unheard voices and put Geordie accents on stage!
"I'm a kid from Arthur's Hill, I didn't go to the theatre that much and when I did, there wasn't that many Geordie accents.
"I want to tell Geordie stories, in a Geordie accent."
Natalie also tells us about her decision to have an intimacy director involved in the show - with some of the scenes containing adult themes;
"It is a really great practice around boundary setting and consent.
"And that feels really critical anyway, but particularly in a post pandemic world where everything feels like it's changed,
"We're not used to being with people, we're not used to touching each other."
It's a concept which has become more well known in the light of big TV series such as I May Destroy You and Normal People, hiring intimacy directors or coordinators to make sure all cast and crew members feel comfortable and safe in their jobs - something Natalie tells us can help empower the actors to be able to express what they are and are not comfortable with.
She tells us it's a good practice of communication as well for the company.
Nadia Iftkhar is the play's movement director, and is from the North East too:
"What is important to me is we are more than shipbuilding - but that becomes the beginning and end of our identity - and that's just not true.
"What's beautiful about this show for me is that it's about everyday life in a North East area.
"I think some of it is definitely universal, but some of it really isn't,
"There are communities which were allowed to get pushed further into poverty that other communities weren't.
"In many ways it is universal among those people who know what it is to be ignored, and have their desires and hopes and dreams pushed to the very back of the queue, and that is continuing now."
ROAD is on at Newcastle's Northern Stage from October 8th - 30th and you can find out more via their website, and social media.