Artistic Associate (Peterborough) – details
Engine Room is our new annual residency project for Peterborough – creating
two new productions, delivering workshops, rehearsed readings and new
talent development. It will also showcase a range of additional work that will
highlight Peterborough as an engine room for theatre creation.
The Artistic Associate will be at the heart of the planning and delivery of this
brand new initiative, funded by Esmée Fairbairn, Vivacity and Arts Council
Catalyst.
CONTEXT
Eastern Angles is the regional touring theatre company for the East of
England taking work to around sixty different venues each year. Principally
based in Ipswich, at the Sir John Mills Theatre, we also have a satellite base
in Peterborough. Our pioneering work in this city of low engagement has
helped transform the cultural scene and has involved new writing, community
engagement with Heritage Lottery projects, transfer of our Christmas show,
and community plays in found spaces such as Flag Fen Archaeological Park
and the undercroft of the Tesco Superstore in Serpentine Green Shopping
Centre.
In addition to planning our Engine Room residency, we are currently
rehearsing a medieval mystery play, Mary & The Midwives, and booking a
Strategic Touring revival of our musical about the Peterborough Development
Corporation, Parkway Dreams.
Peterborough is an exciting place to be, and our base at Chauffeurs Cottage
in the centre of the city is the hub for a raft of new organisations now working
in the city: Vivacity (the city’s culture and leisure trust), Metal Culture (the arts
agency with similar bases in Liverpool and Southend), Peterborough Presents
(an ACE Creative People and Places project), NIE (New International
Encounters – working with young people), and a host of local artists and
eager community performers.
TO APPLY:
Simply send your up to date CV, a letter (no more than 2 sides of A4)
explaining why you believe you would be suitable for this job and why you
want it, and the Equal Opportunities Monitoring sheet and return to
Ivan@easternangles.co.uk by end of play Wednesday June 17th.
Interviews will be held on Tuesday 23rd June in Peterborough.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Job Title:
Salary
Responsible to:
Responsible to you:
Artistic Associate (Peterborough)
£12k (8 month contract)
Artistic Director & Executive Director
Artistic teams where designated
You will be:
- with us for 8 months
- helping on the final stages of our production of Mary & the Midwives
with director Tony Casement. This medieval “mystery” play with an
ensemble of community performers will be performed outside the
cathedral on 4/5 July.
- planning, scheduling, launching and running the 2 week residency of
plays, rehearsed readings and workshops that will comprise our first
season of Engine Room in November in a “found space” in
Peterborough
- delivering workshops in schools in Peterborough, Corby and Luton as
part of our remounting of Parkway Dreams. Helping host our two
performances of Parkway Dreams at The Key Theatre on 6/7 October
- assisting on Chicken by Molly Davies, directed by Steven Atkinson
before its presentation at Paines Plough’s Roundabout season in
Summerhall at the Edinburgh Fringe.
- running a new writing programme with our group of local writers in
Peterborough to find new voices for future Engine Room commissions
- reading scripts and feeding back to writers, directing rehearsed
readings and helping to finalise the presentations
- directing Nativity Blues by Danusia Iwaszko, an hour long
contemporary and multi-cultural version of the old medieval sequence
of the “joyful mysteries” of Mary for 2 weeks of performances in our
new performance space
- blogging and tweeting the progress of the project
- evaluating the whole project
- developing and trialling a youth theatre group in our new found space
- representing the company in Peterborough and developing new
connections and audiences for our work
- helping make Peterborough come alive and develop a cultural habit!
QUALITIES SOUGHT
For this artistic and representative role we are looking for someone who has:
 a knowledge and love of theatre, an empathy with the nature of
regional touring, and an interest in new writing.
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experience of directing theatre, running projects and managing
budgets.
initiative and is a proven self-starter
good communication skills across all media, being literate, numerate
and with proven creative ability and an excellent eye for detail. You will
be able to think clearly and strategically and enjoy producing plans and
executing decisions.
the ability to work well in a small team and be willing to contribute to
the creation of future strategies for the company. You must have the
capacity to organise your own time effectively, ensure that all work is
up to date and accurate.
excellent word processing, data management, spreadsheet skills and
all round competency on Microsoft packages.
good copywriting skills
ability to assume responsibility
present a tidy appearance and deal with people in a warm and friendly
manner
It would be a significant advantage to have
 transport, or access to transport and the ability to drive,
 dramaturgical experience and skills
 previous experience in workshop devising and education
Eastern Angles – the wider picture
‘The East of England would be a far poorer place theatrically without the
indispensible Eastern Angles.’ - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
Eastern Angles is the regional touring theatre company for the East of
England and performs to over 18,000 people each year across 65 venues.
Formed in 1982, Eastern Angles has blazed a trail across the East of
England, becoming a national model of excellence for rural touring before
expanding to include national touring, Edinburgh Festival visits and sitespecific work.
Our varied programme offers over 175 performances each year, often
reaching people who would otherwise have no access to professional theatre,
and currently includes a community tour to village halls with new writing from
the region, special projects and development work in Peterborough, sitebased performance at The Hush House, and a Christmas show to Ipswich,
Woodbridge and Peterborough. As a critical component of this we
commission new plays, and workshop new scripts. Where the opportunities
allow, we also tour shows nationally.
What makes Eastern Angles different?
All our shows have a sense of place and mostly a flavour of some aspect of
the East of England. Increasingly, they provide the public engagement
element of larger Heritage Lottery Fund projects and this brings extra
resource to the production (e.g. Oysters for Spring 2015 as part of the Pioneer
Sailing Trust project to restore an oyster dredger (www.pioneerck18.org) and
Somewhere In England for Spring 2016 (as part of the Eighth In The East
project to record and explore the effect on the social and geographical
landscape of the arrival of the American 8th Airforce in 1942 www.8theast.org)
After twenty-five years of touring rural communities we turned our hand to
urban development in Peterborough and found we liked it. We have put on
over a dozen shows there, performing in small community spaces, the Key
Theatre Studio, a marquee at Flag Fen archaeological site (Dark Earth, a
community play with 40 performers) and the undercroft of a shopping mall at
Serpentine Green (River Lane, a community play with 80 community
performers).
We also tour to Edinburgh, London and other parts of the country. I Caught Crabs
in Walberswick played at The Bush and I Heart Peterborough at Soho Theatre.
Both plays by Joel Horwood got great reviews in Edinburgh and London.
We run our own box-office, recently upgraded to Spektrix, selling tickets for
our self-promoted market town performances, our larger site-specific shows,
our Christmas shows and visiting companies using the Sir John Mills Theatre.
We have our own 300-seat mobile raked seating system. This allows us to
create variously configured auditoria in halls, barns and found spaces (such
as our aircraft hanger venue, The Hush House), make our Christmas show
traverse, and also hire our seating out to other organisations.