The Brief Case of the Briefcase
- part of the Trouble in Town Courtyard Extravaganza
Arts organisations: Seaglass Collective & Lawrence Batley Theatre
The Lawrence Batley Theatre in partnership with Seaglass Collective worked with young adopted people to create a performance piece on the Our Biennale theme of Magnificent Me. They worked with drama specialists over several weeks and performing alongside The Lawrence Batley Theatre’s Young Company members on Saturday 16th July from 3 to 4 pm for friends, families and the general public, bringing the courtyard alive with creative energy and fun. Audiences were asked to expect twists, turns, surprises and laughs as they took them on a quest to discover the true Huddersfield!
BLOG: Together Again
My name is Natalie and I’m the lead tutor for the Seaglass Collective Youth Theatre, which is hosted by Lawrence Batley Theatre. It's been a challenging couple of years and so being able to come together, create and perform for an audience as part of the Evoke Biennale is call for celebration!
During lockdown our youth theatre sessions were postponed, moved online and held outside, until eventually, when safe to do so we finally began to meet at LBT again. It took some time for all our young people to return to sessions, but once they did we had a lot of fun creating work together - these young people are incredibly funny and super talented.
The Evoke Biennale has provided an exciting opportunity for Seaglass Collective to create its very first public performance piece. The atmosphere around the festival has been great and the chance for all the youth theatre groups to perform together is quite special, providing a long awaited opportunity for them all to meet and support each others performances.
As soon as we were given the theme for the festival we got to work. Our piece is inspired by Film Noir and detective film tropes of the 50’s and 60’s. We used music to inspire improvisations, which we then developed movement sequences and characters from.
We've had a lot of fun making this piece. The young people have worked incredibly hard and constantly surprise me with their skills and enthusiasm. We can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Opportunities for young people to come together, create, perform and share are more important than ever, so thank you again for making this event happen.
See you there.
- Natalie
BLOG: by participant Max, age 13
It's been great to find a new challenge with Seaglass, Lawrence Batley Theatre and Our Biennale - one featuring ridiculously over-the-top and inaccurate New York accents.
The Brief Case of the Briefcase (lovingly nicknamed the Brief-Briefcase-Case) is the biggest thing I've ever done! I've never done anything like this! We have been practising this for a while, having done a dress rehearsal quite recently, watching the LBT’s groups’ performances, then learning from our mistakes. Our performance features detectives trying to track down a briefcase. Through the performance’s twists and turns, there are many tropes of the detective/mystery genre (specifically focusing on the noir detective era), devious characters and young children being poisoned with blow-darts – there’s something for everyone! It may be short, but every minute is packed with intrigue (and/or voiceovers).
The Brief Case of the Briefcase, showed for just one time only at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, featuring the best that Seaglass has to offer (and me)!
- Max, aged 13