The North Wall’s second annual summer residency ran from 30 July to 20 August. Directed by Lucy Maycock and Dan Danson, former Artistic Director at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol. They were supported by a professional team of designers and technicians, and the company consisted of twenty 16-21 year olds, drawn from all parts of the country and abroad following extensive auditions in Oxford and London.
The project was based around Geraldine McCaughrean’s novel The White Darkness, set in the wastes of Antarctica. All the seats in the North Wall theatre were removed to give a large open space, and within this area the company worked over the three-week period to create a sense of barrenness, wind and ice, human vulnerability, even taking on the character of penguins!
A strong feeling of ensemble developed during the school, and we are again indebted to the Garfield Weston Foundation and to St Edward’s Oxford for their support which enabled the school to take place at no cost to the participants.
“I’ve learnt so much about myself and the way that others think, alike or different, an energy came alive within those three weeks and it hasn’t left me since. The experience of working on The North Wall Outreach Project has inspired me to be active rather than passive with my ambitions, to go out and seek what makes me tick rather than waiting around for a moment that might never come.”
Lucy Harper (White Darkness, 2008)
