Photographer | Storyteller
Venice, Summer 2017 – In only recent years has Climate Change come to the top of a global agenda but in Venice there has, for hundreds of years, been a concerted effort to combat the rising waters and a sinking city. The causes are many, not least the literal flood of tourists and the daily arrival of vast cruise ships into the heart of the city’s waters.
Action Transport Theatre’s Family Festival brings a variety of art forms to Ellesmere Port annually – storytelling, theatre, film, craft workshops, digital escape rooms and more. 2018’s festival brought a unique street theatre group and turned a grey day into one which filled the Port Arcades shopping mall and surrounding streets with laughter. The Boom Booms, with their outrageous non-verbal comedy style burst onto the…
Following the development of the play and inclusion of design elements in South Africa and then rehearsals at Action Transport Theatre‘s base at Whitby Hall, GOGO played nationally, premiering at the Unicorn Theatre, London – the UK’s national theatre for children. The designer for GOGO was London based Caroline Thaw. Set build was by Mike Francis and Caroline. Lighting design was also by Mike Francis….
An already flourishing partnership between Cheshire-based ACTION TRANSPORT THEATRE and Soweto’s VULAVULANI THEATRE COMPANY took an interesting turn in 2006 with the writing of Kevin Dyer’s children’s play GOGO. On previous visits to Soweto, ATT’s artistic director Joe Sumsion had been drawn to the power of the extended family and, in particular, the role of the gogo – grandmother. Joe and Kevin spent time in…
Gail Young is a writer living in Guilden Sutton, a Cheshire village, where amateur theatre plays an important role in the community. Gail’s first full-length play, CHESHIRE CATS, is a comedy drama about a group of women who set out to raise funds for a breast cancer charity. Following publication by Samuel French, CHESHIRE CATS received great acclaim having been performed by groups not only…
‘NIGHT TRAIN comes from the true stories of young people who run away… from home, foster parents, residential units, the coppers, everything…’ Night Train was written in 2007 by four professional actors – Roy Barber, Curtis Cole, Sarah McDonald Hughes, Dee Shepherd – supported by Kevin Dyer, Associate Writer, Action Transport Theatre. They interviewed many young people in care and…
ANOTHER PLACE, Antony Gormley’s sometime controversial installation is a collection of one hundred cast iron figures of his own body facing out to sea. Spread over a two mile stretch of Crosby Beach, it was positioned in 2005 having previously been displayed in Germany, Norway and Belgium. Due to be moved to New York in November, 2006, Sefton Council had the foresight to raise funds…
John Moorhouse, a writer from Ellesmere Port, was commissioned by Action Transport Theatre (which is based in the town) to write a play for young people and it marked his debut as a professional writer. It was also the first production at ATT to be directed by Nina Hajiyianni as the new Associate Director. Here John reflects on the origin of the play and the…
TIKA TIKA – Zulu for ‘the one who liked to indulge’ – is the creation of South African professional actor Sizwe Vilakazi. It is a one man show inspired by his own life growing up in Soweto. Sizwe Vilakazi first worked with Action Transport Theatre (ATT) as a performer in ‘Tselane’s Song’, a co-production with Vulavulani Theatre Company, Soweto, South Africa touring…
The MP Sir Anthony Berry was killed in the Brighton Bombing of 1984 during the Tory Party Conference. A timed bomb had been planted in his room at the Grand Hotel three weeks previously by IRA activist Pat Magee. Magee was given multiple life sentences. He was released under the Good Friday Agreement of 1999 and has, since that time, been actively involved in work…
The Carlton Centre is a skyscraper and shopping centre in the heart of downtown Johannesburg. With its fifty floors – nearly half of which are below ground level – it is the tallest building in Africa. It houses offices and the largest shopping mall in South Africa. The observation deck on the fiftieth floor – known as Top of Africa – gives a panoramic view…
This collection of photographs charts the making of a play for young people. It shows the bringing together of four actors and their journey to write a play collaboratively with an award-winning playwright, Kevin Dyer. 2009 ACTION TRANSPORT THEATRE is commissioned by Cheshire County Council’s Rural Touring Arts Network to produce a play. The writers are Sarah Calver, Doug Crossley, Freddie Machin and Ben…
This shy young girl of eleven or twelve was already practicing her dance alone when I was invited into the gloomy, bare building where every late afternoon excited youngsters of all ages arrived to practice their traditional dance routines. She seemed lost in the moment and seemed to be dancing for her life. She was a scrap of a thing with the physical signs of…
Robben Island, just seven miles from Cape Town, has a long and dark history as a place of imprisonment and exclusion but is now a museum, recording the incarceration of the political prisoners of South Africa’s Apartheid era, most notably Nelson Mandela. However, it is more than a museum. It has become a place of pilgrimage and celebration of one man’s struggle for freedom. Former…
I took the first image from a bridge above the track; the girl in her immaculate school uniform – no uniform means no school – and the woman in traditional Sowetan dress crossing the railway line that divides their lives between the opportunities open to the few and the shackland that is Kliptown. The next two follow the girl as she makes her way alongsidethe…
TRUE AND IMMORTAL SISTER was one of four plays showcasing the work of young emerging writers produced by ACTION TRANSPORT THEATRE. This is the story of the development of the play but also the story of the writer. The play, written by seventeen-year-old Maisie Linford, tells the story of two young girls who have fled Afghanistan to a new life in England. The elder girl,…
Kliptown is the oldest of twenty-five townships that comprise Soweto (an abbreviation for South West Townships), now part of Johannesburg. It was first laid out in 1893 and from 1903 was home to ‘informal settlements’ – squatter camps or shacklands. In 1955 the Congress of the People – organised by the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats…
THERE’S ONLY ONE OF YOU Making Theatre From The Thoughts of Children The world of the child is one that is inquisitive, excited, and hungry for answers to an infinite number of questions; questions that are sometimes simple, demanding simple answers, but are frequently complex. The story of this piece of theatre has its roots in questions – and sometimes answers – from young children…