Our general meeting is at 1:30pm today in Gallery Room 4 in the Union – please come along!

January has been all systems go over here, with loads of exciting preparations for the coming season.

A Dream Play

Our first show of the Spring Season opens next week, and the Dream Team have been hard at work in rehearsals getting the show ready as well as acquiring fridges and trees and building a jetty.  Such is life doing a Caryl Churchill play.  Check out the show blog and some rehearsal pictures taken in full costume glory:

More can be found on the Facebook album. Best of luck to them with their forthcoming show week (8th-11th February), the tickets for which can be purchased at the Students’ Union Box Office, or reserved through 0114 222 8676.

Brontë
The Brontë team have been having bags of fun!  Their blog is really worth a read, it’s absolutely barmy.  Illustration for their poster is being completed as I write, and the team travelled to Derbyshire this week to shoot their trailer – both locations being covered in snow, which was a very pleasant surprise.  Here are some teasers of what to expect – their trailer will be going live a week today:

All moody and arty.  But genuinely freezing.  A big well done to all the cast for being so willing to de-robe in subzero conditions.

SuTCo Sunday Play on Forge Radio
Our radio play comeback comes in the form of Lucy Weston’s production of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Tolling Bell. With Andy Elkington and Peter Weston taking the roles of Holmes and Watson, Tom Lodge as a nosy postman, Mel Harrison being terribly sour-faced, Jenny Pendriss a blubbering mess, and Rachel Turner and Joe Bunce as two young lovers, this is a show not to be missed.  Immerse yourself in this bundle of joy on Sunday at 8pm by tuning in to  www.forgetoday.com/radio.

Ultimate Fair
Wednesday 8th February – come and find us in the Octagon Centre and on the concourse outside the Union – all kinds of fun things will be a’happening.  You’ll see.

Be sure to keep following the blogs for A Dream Play over the next seven days and Brontë over the next couple of weeks (things are gonna get all manner of crazy) and make it your mission to go and get tickets for A Dream Play - trust me, you’re really not going to want to miss it.

Happy Sunday to you all!

Stuart
Digital Publicist

Ultimate Fair: we will be there! We’ll have our own stand in the Octagon as well as all kinds of fun happening on the concourse outside the Union. It’s on 8th February (incidentally, opening night of A Dream Play) – come along and say hello! There will be loads of information about the workshops and projects we’ve got planned for this semester. All of these things are good.

Publicity has been kickstarted for the Spring Season – the poster and trailer for A Dream Play will be posted on here later today.  Illustration for the Brontë poster is commencing this week.  Exciting!

ISDF news: Congratulations to James Travers, Matt Plant, Josh Finan, Ellie Webb, Megan Gunn and Joe Bunce for being accepted into the ensemble of the International Student Drama Festival 2012!  The Festival is in Sheffield this year for the Cultural Olympiad, and we’re so excited to have had this many people selected.  A big well done to all!

Radio plays: We have our radio plays for our Spring semester with Forge Radio!
First up, we have the detective romp Sherlock Holmes: Adventure of the Tolling Bell, directed by Lucy Weston, followed by Mike Edwardson’s two-part adaptation of Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love.

Meanwhile, Tom Lodge presents a serialised – and interactive! – adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges, which winds to its conclusion as Ellen Jurczak presents a tale of sex and middle-agedness, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, by Terrence McNally.

After a special broadcast for the Platform Performance Festival, Tom Brown’s modern reimagining of traditional fairytale Cinderella closes our show for the Easter holidays, which reopens for James Travers self-written The Life in a Day and Rachel Turner’s adaptation of Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair.

…and I think that’s it for now? I’ve probably forgotten something crucial. The website and Facebook are gradually gearing up to a flurry of activity for this semester (‘flurry’ is a good word), so keep checking back to see what’s cracking. Super.

Stuart
Digital Publicist

There is progress! Hurray! We have a new website header. This sends me into something of a hysterical frenzy. Also, Look Back in Anger and Equus have show pages (hit up the Archives section). I’ll be blitzing through the rest of the Autumn Season tomorrow, and then going backwards down the ages. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed Arsalan, our Head of Publicity, has been digging down in the dusty archives as far back as we can go to retrieve digital records of shows before ‘our time’ – these will make their way onto the website asap, we’re going back in chronological order. Very orderly. I like order. And calendars and charts and lists.

Before I leave you, I would thoroughly recommend Michael Buble’s Christmas album. That man’s a dream.

Wishing you the merriest of Christmases,

Stu, Digital Publicist

Great news from the SuTCo camp. After trying to track down computer people to help us (who, when found, were often unhelpful), our Head of Publicity has got all technical, worked his magic and finally got our website up and running again! A big thank you for Arsalan for this.

And you know what this means… things will actually start appearing on this here website! Hurray! 2012 is shaping up to be very exciting: we have our Spring Season of shows (A Dream Play, Brontë, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up); our Projects Officers are running a Workshop-a-Week scheme; we’re organising a volunteer trip to Africa; there will be ever more opportunities for involvement with the Sunday Play team at Forge Radio; and we will be pointing you in the direction of Platform Performance Festival, happening at Easter. Alongside loads of other exciting things!

Expect the website to have a bit of a binge on information/pictures over the next couple of days. It may be a little bit messy until everything’s sorted and in its proper place, but this should take no time at all

On that note, I shall bid you farewell, and drive home and get on with it. I hope that, after this incredible news, Christmas isn’t too disappointing for you all.

Stu, Digital Publicist

A Dream Play by August Strindberg, adapted by Caryl Churchill

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Based on the novel by Lewis Carroll, adapted by Malaika Cunningham & Sarah Balchin

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Salome by Oscar Wilde

It’s all got off to a cracking start for the 2011-12 academic year, with our Autumn 2011 season. The Activities Fair saw record-breaking numbers come and sign up to be involved with the company this year – which is fantastic! Thank you to those who have. We got a headstart on our publicity for our first show of the season, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger – check out the trailer in exciting 1080p HD:

We had auditions for King Lear and Our Country’s Good, to which loads of new faces turned up! These shows are now fully cast and raring to go, no doubt. We also had our Crew Call, an opportunity for new and existing members of the company to sign up to a technical mailing list to be kept in the loop on all our lighting, sound, set, costume, make-up, props and absolutely-everything workshops that are starting up in October. To anyone who’s interested in technical theatre, it’s not too late to get involved and learn – just send us an email at theatre.company@shef.ac.uk, for the attention of Chris Irving, our Technical Manager.

For weekly detailed updates of our progress and our work, please email us on the above address and ask to be put on the mailing list! My ‘vision’ for the website will gradually unfold over the coming weeks, and it soon should be covered head-to-toe in all things SuTCo. Amazing.

Stu
Digital Publicist