Romeo and Juliet

The Reader Organisation, in partnership with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, Mersey Care NHS Trust, Cobalt Housing, Merseytravel,  Liverpool City Council and Liverpool PCT will be deliver a community production of Romeo and Juliet in August 2010. Full details will be announced shortly.

Please see our website for details of our previous Community Shakespeare production of The Winter’s Tale (Birkenhead Park 2008)

Applications are invited for the post of Designer for the 2010 Merseyside Community Theatre production of Romeo & Juliet.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the concept and delivery of the design, both set and costumes. You will have professional experience and be based locally, preferably with some experience of community work. You will work with the script, director, lighting and sound designers and oversee the whole creative process, ensuring that it is delivered on time and on budget. You will be working with a large team of community volunteers and willingness to work with non-professionals will be a key quality the Director and Producer will be seeking. The production will have 4 weeks rehearsal culminating in 6 performances at the end of August. You will also work on a project launch event scheduled for the end of April 2010.  Fee £3k.

Please send a letter of application and your CV to Zoe Gilling, Business Manager, The Reader Organisation. Applications must be received no later than 5.00pm Tuesday 16th March. No applications arriving after this time will be considered. Email applications are preferred: zoegilling@thereader.org.uk

Interviews will be held at The Reader Organisation offices, 19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7ZG, on the afternoon of Friday 19th March.

From today, until 6th December, an exhibition of costumes, photographs and artwork is to be displayed in Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre to celebrate the wonderful achievement of all of those involved in Wirral Community Shakespeare. Costumes and props from the performance will be on show, as will photographs of rehearsals and the performances taken by Wallasey Amateur Photographic Society.

Also being exhibited is original artwork, inspired by the project, by artists Michelle Molyneux (photocollagist) and Joan Evans (graphic and visual artist). A DVD of the rehearsals and ‘behind the scenes’ action will be also be shown during the exhibition’s opening hours.

Liverpool Reads Coordinator

Q: How do you get thousands of Scousers to read the same book?
A: Why don’t you tell us?

Liverpool Reads is a city-wide reading initiative which gets tens of thousands of people on Merseyside reading the same book each year. Founded in 2004, Liverpool Reads has become a big fixture in Liverpool’s cultural calendar, reaching thousands of people in very diverse communities. This year we gave away 13,000 books, ran scores of local reading groups, and hosted some fabulous large-scale events.

Books are free travel passes for journeys through space and time, and it’s a brilliant, radical idea on the part of Liverpool Reads to distribute them to the people of Liverpool.
Mal Peet, Liverpool Reads Author 2008

If you think you have the energy, talent, love of literature, project management skills and administrative nous to coordinate Liverpool Reads, please get in touch now. We’d love to hear from you (details below).

Wirral Community Shakespeare Coordinator

Wirral Community Shakespeare (WCS) is a social inclusion project which has grown out of The Reader Organisation‘s nationally-lauded Get into Reading project. It combines theatrical production of the highest calibre with supportive and extensive social inclusion work. In August 2008 WCS staged an open-air production of The Winter’s Tale in Birkenhead Park (involving 28 members of the local community and a small team of professionals) to critical acclaim and the joy of the Wirral population. The Reader Organisation would like to build on this event and make an annual production the culmination of a full year’s social inclusion work.

Wirral Community Shakespeare gave me the feeling of being part of something very special, like the birth of a new baby. Let’s watch it grow.
WCS cast member

If you have a love of Shakespeare and of people, and you think you have the energy, project management skills and administrative nous to coordinate Wirral Community Shakespeare, please apply (details below).

Deadline for applications for both jobs is Monday 27th October. Please contact Chris Catterall, Business Manager for an application pack: email  chriscatterall<at>thereader.org.uk or call 0151 794 2830.

You can download this information to print out. Click here for information about the Get Into reading Coordinator post or here for information about the Wirral Community Shakespeare post.

We are about to deliver Shipping Lines Liverpool Literary Festival (website details available soon) for the University of Liverpool. It’s an amazing festival programme to have got up and running in one year – congratulations to everyone but especially Renee – and we wouldn’t have done it without the University’s desire to make something wonderful for ’08 and willingness to put hard cash behind that desire.

Wirral Community Shakespeare wouldn’t have happened without ’08. This amazing event got started in January when our Get Into Reading project started a weekly Shakespeare reading group at The Lauries Community Centre in Birkenhead. We forged a partnership with the Aspire Trust who brought in the wonderful Aspire photographic artists Joan Evans and Michelle Molyneux, Assistant Director Mandy Reevers-Rowe and Music Director, Ceri Williams – all new colleagues and people we will want to work with again. We wouldn’t have made these connections without ’08. Photos of the rehearsals and show can be seen here.

It was an utter delight to me to see so many people from Get Into Reading playing a part in the final production. I saw Louise striding across the huge and verdant stage, looking as confident as a catwalk model, with that beautiful and elegant dog – of course The Reader Organisation’s Shakespeare has a dog in it! Of course! – and I listened enthralled as Portia Sugarev of the Get Into Reading Leasowe group said her lines, and as the washer women scene unfolded… and I thought: we wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t for ’08.

Many, many thanks to all our supporters, financiers, friends and relations for getting this show on the road and big thanks to Starbucks, for keeping the cast, crew and production team going in coffee and cake. We needed those refreshments!

As we struck set and decamped from Birkenhead Park I had a conversation with Park Ranger Paul Davies about how we might develop a project for the young people who hang out in the park (and who didn’t cause us a jot of bother during show week) so as to get them involved in Wirral Community Shakespeare next year (oh yes… there will be a next year). Ranger Paul, a martial arts instructor, is about to play the Soporific Argentinian in the production of Moulin Rouge. Now there’s a skillset. Watch this space for news of the project.

Then last night I was in the packed Philharmonic Hall to stand and cheer Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker playing Wagner Prelude and Liebestod, Tristan and Isolde and Messiaen Turangalila Symphony. This was an electrifying performance – and in the case of the Messiaen of a work I’d never have been able to concentrate on as recorded music. The double basses were superbly violent and heavy, like bloody great rhinoceroi at one side of the platform, the man with cymbals breathtakingly wide armed and Sir Simon himself, utterly mesmerising, as life and power and intelligence flowed through his body, down his arms, and out of his fingertips (and hair!) to irradiate the entire hall and audience with a burning energy.

Live events, I thought, remembering last week’s production of The Winter’s Tale, are an altogether different order of experience. And here we are getting them, week in and week out, in Liverpool at the moment. Later this afternoon, to round off my week of eclectic experiences I’m going to go and seek out The Spider…

Posted by Jane Davis

We are about to deliver Shipping Lines Liverpool Literary Festival (website details available soon) for the University of Liverpool. It’s an amazing festival programme to have got up and running in one year – congratulations to everyone but especially Renee – and we wouldn’t have done it without the University’s desire to make something wonderful for ’08 and willingness to put hard cash behind that desire.

Wirral Community Shakespeare wouldn’t have happened without ’08. This amazing event got started in January when our Get Into Reading project started a weekly Shakespeare reading group at The Lauries Community Centre in Birkenhead. We forged a partnership with the Aspire Trust who brought in the wonderful Aspire photographic artists Joan Evans and Michelle Molyneux, Assistant Director Mandy Reevers-Rowe and Music Director, Ceri Williams – all new colleagues and people we will want to work with again. We wouldn’t have made these connections without ’08. Photos of the rehearsals and show can be seen here.

It was an utter delight to me to see so many people from Get Into Reading playing a part in the final production. I saw Louise striding across the huge and verdant stage, looking as confident as a catwalk model, with that beautiful and elegant dog – of course The Reader Organisation’s Shakespeare has a dog in it! Of course! – and I listened enthralled as Portia Sugarev of the Get Into Reading Leasowe group said her lines, and as the washer women scene unfolded… and I thought: we wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t for ’08.

Many, many thanks to all our supporters, financiers, friends and relations for getting this show on the road and big thanks to Starbucks, for keeping the cast, crew and production team going in coffee and cake. We needed those refreshments!

As we struck set and decamped from Birkenhead Park I had a conversation with Park Ranger Paul Davies about how we might develop a project for the young people who hang out in the park (and who didn’t cause us a jot of bother during show week) so as to get them involved in Wirral Community Shakespeare next year (oh yes… there will be a next year). Ranger Paul, a martial arts instructor, is about to play the Soporific Argentinian in the production of Moulin Rouge. Now there’s a skillset. Watch this space for news of the project.

Then last night I was in the packed Philharmonic Hall to stand and cheer Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker playing Wagner Prelude and Liebestod, Tristan and Isolde and Messiaen Turangalila Symphony. This was an electrifying performance – and in the case of the Messiaen of a work I’d never have been able to concentrate on as recorded music. The double basses were superbly violent and heavy, like bloody great rhinoceroi at one side of the platform, the man with cymbals breathtakingly wide armed and Sir Simon himself, utterly mesmerising, as life and power and intelligence flowed through his body, down his arms, and out of his fingertips (and hair!) to irradiate the entire hall and audience with a burning energy.

Live events, I thought, remembering last week’s production of The Winter’s Tale, are an altogether different order of experience. And here we are getting them, week in and week out, in Liverpool at the moment. Later this afternoon, to round off my week of eclectic experiences I’m going to go and seek out The Spider…

Posted by Jane Davis

The show was an astounding success, thrilling audiences and instilling enormous pride in everyone involved in the project. “Remarkable…a fantastic ensemble piece and great team effort of which all involved should be justifiably proud,” Liverpool Daily Post. Directed by Brookside‘s Neil Caple and starring twenty-eight members of the local community, with Coronation Street‘s Pauline Fleming as Paulina, the cast and crew staged an unforgettable show.

It is estimated that more than 1500 people saw the performances in the “fabulous setting” of Birkenhead Park. Free tickets and huge involvement by the local community – in the cast and crew – plus some big names, meant that The Reader Organisation’s aim to make Shakespeare more accessible to people in the wider community has been realised. Councillor Phil Davies, who attended the performance on Friday evening, said,

I’m sure that the fact that tickets were free encouraged people who may never have read or seen a play by Shakespeare to attend. All in all, it was a great night and I very much hope that other plays and performances can be staged in the park in future years.

A mixture of pleasure, pride and surprise was felt amongst the audience, cast and crew: people didn’t expect something that “great and good” in Birkenhead. “This is important, for Birkenhead and for the park,” said one audience member and another commented, “The park’s only used by dog-walkers and scallies. To see it being used like this is wonderful, like reclaiming it for what it should be used for.”

A volunteer on the refreshment stall, a Get Into Reading group member said, “I’m so impressed by what’s been achieved, a wow for the audience and a truly profound, uplifting experience for the Get Into Reading members involved: double success!”

It’s been a remarkable inaugural year for Wirral Community Shakespeare and we hope, due to an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and support received, that The Winter’s Tale is the first of many open-air productions. One cast member commented, “Many of us are asking ourselves, ‘what are we going to do now after such an intense experience? – we all know we’ll be back next year”.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

The show was an astounding success, thrilling audiences and instilling enormous pride in everyone involved in the project. “Remarkable…a fantastic ensemble piece and great team effort of which all involved should be justifiably proud,” Liverpool Daily Post. Directed by Brookside‘s Neil Caple and starring twenty-eight members of the local community, with Coronation Street‘s Pauline Fleming as Paulina, the cast and crew staged an unforgettable show.

It is estimated that more than 1500 people saw the performances in the “fabulous setting” of Birkenhead Park. Free tickets and huge involvement by the local community – in the cast and crew – plus some big names, meant that The Reader Organisation’s aim to make Shakespeare more accessible to people in the wider community has been realised. Councillor Phil Davies, who attended the performance on Friday evening, said,

I’m sure that the fact that tickets were free encouraged people who may never have read or seen a play by Shakespeare to attend. All in all, it was a great night and I very much hope that other plays and performances can be staged in the park in future years.

A mixture of pleasure, pride and surprise was felt amongst the audience, cast and crew: people didn’t expect something that “great and good” in Birkenhead. “This is important, for Birkenhead and for the park,” said one audience member and another commented, “The park’s only used by dog-walkers and scallies. To see it being used like this is wonderful, like reclaiming it for what it should be used for.”

A volunteer on the refreshment stall, a Get Into Reading group member said, “I’m so impressed by what’s been achieved, a wow for the audience and a truly profound, uplifting experience for the Get Into Reading members involved: double success!”

It’s been a remarkable inaugural year for Wirral Community Shakespeare and we hope, due to an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and support received, that The Winter’s Tale is the first of many open-air productions. One cast member commented, “Many of us are asking ourselves, ‘what are we going to do now after such an intense experience? – we all know we’ll be back next year”.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

The two extra performances will be on Thursday 28th August at 7.45pm and a matinee on Friday 29th August at 2pm. The tickets are FREE and will be available from 10am today, Thursday 21st August, at Birkenhead Park Pavilion (can be obtained from 10am – 4pm, Monday to Saturday thereafter). There are also a few more tickets available for the three original performances (Friday 29th August at 7.45pm, Saturday 30th August at 2pm and 7.45pm). Be quick, they’ll be snapped-up!

Cast members in rehearsals

The Wirral Community Shakespeare Project is community led; it was an idea that came from members of Get Into Reading groups. Twenty-eight members of the Birkenhead community join professional actors and crew, Coronation Street‘s Pauline Fleming (starring as Paulina) and Brookside‘s Neil Caple (Director) to put on a performance that aims to make Shakespeare more accessible to more people. Due to the unprecedented demand for tickets and the project’s engagement with the community, this production proves to be successful in reaching out to new audiences – spectators and participants. 

Posted by Jen Tomkins

The two extra performances will be on Thursday 28th August at 7.45pm and a matinee on Friday 29th August at 2pm. The tickets are FREE and will be available from 10am today, Thursday 21st August, at Birkenhead Park Pavilion (can be obtained from 10am – 4pm, Monday to Saturday thereafter). There are also a few more tickets available for the three original performances (Friday 29th August at 7.45pm, Saturday 30th August at 2pm and 7.45pm). Be quick, they’ll be snapped-up!

Cast members in rehearsals

The Wirral Community Shakespeare Project is community led; it was an idea that came from members of Get Into Reading groups. Twenty-eight members of the Birkenhead community join professional actors and crew, Coronation Street‘s Pauline Fleming (starring as Paulina) and Brookside‘s Neil Caple (Director) to put on a performance that aims to make Shakespeare more accessible to more people. Due to the unprecedented demand for tickets and the project’s engagement with the community, this production proves to be successful in reaching out to new audiences – spectators and participants. 

Posted by Jen Tomkins

Wirral Community Shakespeare is a project that is running on Wirral with a simple aim, to get anyone involved in producing a great performance of a great play. The project is not simply about putting on a show, it includes workshops, opportunities to volunteer in the build-up to project, to work backstage or front of house on the night.

The show will be on 29th and 30th August in Birkenhead Park. Tickets are FREE and are available to pick up from the Visitors’ Centre, Birkenhead Park 9:30am-4pm. Alternatively send a stamped and addressed envelope to: Get in Reading, The Lauries Centre, 142 Claughton Road, Birkenhead CH61 6EY.

How To Get Involved

Are you interested in being involved? Want to help source props and costumes? Maybe you could host? Or is backstage more your thing? Whatever it is you would like to do, get in touch with Wirral Community Shakespeare using the contact form right here, or email BenDavis [AT] thereader.org.uk