Bridging the Gap 2012

Bridging the Gap


Supported by ARC, Stockton Arts Centre, Theatre Royal Newcastle &
The Maltings, Berwick upon Tweed


Bridging the Gap is a project developed by ARC, Newcastle Theatre Royal and The Maltings
designed to contribute towards the creation of new theatre work within the North East
region.


In 2009-10, the three venues worked together for the first time to offer a joint package of
in-kind support to enable a North East based theatre company to develop and present a
new piece of work across the three venues.


Bridging the Gap in now entering its third year, having supported two companies to date:
Northumberland-based Rabbit Damage, who developed their show Wherever I Lay My Hat
in 2010 and INK Productions, who presented Wanting for Anghus in 2011.


We are now seeking an emerging professional theatre company, with experience of
producing at least one show, to benefit from this package in 2011-12.


What we can offer:


• Six weeks rehearsal space - two weeks at each venue as follows:
w/c 16 & 23 July 2012 Newcastle Theatre Royal
w/c 20 & 27 August 2012 ARC, Stockton Arts Centre
w/c 3 & 10 September 2012 The Maltings, Berwick


• Six performances - two nights in each venue as follows:
The Maltings (Henry Travers Studio) Fri 14 & Sat 15 Sept 2012
ARC (Studio) Tues 18 & Wed 19 Sept 2012
Theatre Royal (Learning Space) Fri 21 & Sat 22 Sept 2012


• Regular monthly ‘keep in touch’ meetings with venue representatives to offer
advice/support. Venue staff are also available to attend rehearsals/sharings/work in
progress to give feedback.
• Marketing support – extensive support available to develop a professional marketing
pack, to assist with selling work to other venues (if appropriate/desirable) and to
audiences. The company would be responsible for producing leaflets/posters, but
venues would support via distribution, press, direct e/mail, website and online
listings etc.
• Technical support – venues will provide a technician for the get in/performance days
(but not during rehearsal period); technical advice will also be available including
support to draw up technical specifications for the show.
• Box Office – full box office services available at all three venues to manage ticket
sales.
• Advocacy and PR – as the selected Associate Company for this project, all three
venues would act as ambassadors for the company’s work, both in the lead up to
the performances, and post-performance in terms of recommendations to potential
touring venues etc.


Additional opportunities:


As an Associate Company linked to the three venues the company would also be invited to:


• Attend events at all three host venues during 2012, to develop a shared
understanding around theatre with venue programmers and other staff
(complimentary tickets will be made available by venues)
• Participate in professional workshops and masterclasses organised by the host
venues where appropriate


Financial arrangements:


Rehearsal and performance space would be provided by the venues free of charge.
Box office monies would be split with the companies 60:40 in their favour. Ticket prices
would be agreed across all three venues, with an allocation of complimentary tickets for
both companies/venues for press and ‘showcasing’ purposes.


Selection Criteria:


• Artists must be living and working in the North East region (as defined by Arts
Council England)
• Applications must be made by professional theatre companies who have produced at
least one show (this project is not aimed at youth theatre groups or
undergraduates)
• We are looking for a company committed to making contemporary theatre (cast size
2+)
• This is not a funded initiative and the selected company must be self-supporting.
However, we can offer guidance with funding applications.


Timescale:


Closing date Mon 21 Nov 2011
Interview Wed 30 Nov 2011
Decision w/c 5 Dec 2011


For more information about the partner venues please visit www.arconline.co.uk;
www.maltingsberwick.co.uk; and www.theatreroyal.co.uk


Applications


If you are interested in applying please email us a proposal (max 2 pages) including details
about:
• Your company – who you are, what stage of development you are at, biogs of key
members, reviews of previous shows
• The show you would like to develop
• How you will fund it
• How you would benefit from Bridging the Gap, and why we should select you
• Some visuals to support your application


Please send your proposals to: annabel.turpin@arconline.co.uk

Working Day 2: The corridor moves on...

On Day 2, the team moved quickly to complete the corridor.

The side of the corridor facing into the studio has been double-boarded with plywood and plasterboard. It will also be padded internally with sound-reducing material. The side of the corridor facing towards Eastern Lane Car Park has been left open at the moment so that the theatrical installers, Black Light, can access it to run cabling when they come onto site on Monday 14 March.

At the moment the corridor looks like this:

The corridor is wide and bright. It's going to make a great place for displaying art exhibitions as it gets lots of natural light. It will be carpeted later in the month, and then painted in soft neutral colours to keep it bright and cheerful.

There's now a ten day break until the next contractors, Black Light, come onto the site on 14 March to complete a huge electrical and technical installation, including a whole new lighting grid, new house and working lights, new sound system, black-out curtaining, projector and screen installation etc etc etc. This work is expected to take around a week...

In the meantime, the whole space including the walls and ceiling, will be painted a matt black to stop distracting light reflections. This work will be carried out by an in-house Maltings team to save money... It's a big job, but we're looking forward to it.

Working Day 1: Work begins on the Henry Travers Studio, 28 February 2011

Work has commenced on the Henry Travers Studio. We're going to keep updating our blog as progress continues towards creating this world-class new venue.

So, we started with this:

At 7.30am on Monday 28 February, George Hepburn & Son, the first of our four contractors, arrived on site to commence the work. At that point, the Studio looked like this:

George's team of builders had arrived to build the new corridor on the right of the photo above. This corridor is essential to link Front of House with the dressing rooms, green room, orchestra pit and Main House Stage, so that people can access these areas while a performance or film is taking place in the studio.

You can see in the 3d image below the corridor and sound-reducing double-entry doors which George's team arrived to construct. The double doors at the centre top of the image are designed to create a 'sound-lock' to reduce the noise transference from a busy box office into the studio during performances and film screenings.

By the end of day one, the new corridor was taking shape:

Creating a world-class studio theatre and cinema

The Henry Travers studio will undergo significant renovations over the next five weeks - find out more below.

Press Release: £78k for ‘world class’ theatre & cinema at The Maltings, Berwick

The Maltings Theatre’s management announced today that a ‘world-class’ theatre and cinema studio will be completed and open at the theatre by 6 April this year.

The announcement follows the decision by the LEADER Coast and Lowlands Funding programme to award the project some £78,000, the full amount for which the theatre applied, which will be partially matched by The Maltings using funding raised by the Friends of the Maltings.

The design for the new studio includes retractable seating.

The redevelopment will see the existing Henry Travers Studio transformed into a state of the art 'black box' studio theatre and cinema, with a new Harlequin-made floor, retractable seating, new lighting and sound rig, new black-out curtains, and a new projector and screen.

This will mean the studio can be used for around 90 additional small- to mid-scale touring music, theatre and dance performances, as well as digital cinema screenings. It will also enhance the facilities available to the many local groups who use the space.

The new flooring will eliminate around 70% of the noise transference which has historically meant that the studio and the main house theatre cannot be used simultaneously.

The addition of retractable seating will mean the studio will present around 100 additional film screenings each year, consolidating The Maltings position as one of the North East's leading independent cinemas.

The current Henry Travers Studio space.

'The creation of a new performance and cinema space like this will result in The Maltings becoming one of the best equipped mid-scale theatres in the north of England,' said Chief Executive and Artistic Director Dr Miles Gregory, 'and we are extremely grateful to the LEADER fund for supporting  this exciting development which will change the way this theatre works forever.’

Attendance by the public at events in the studio is predicted to generate an additional £250,000 for the local economy, with the studio expected to attract attendances of around 8,800 in its first full year of operations. The project is fully supported by Northumberland County Council and Arts Council England, both of whom give regular annual funding to The Maltings.

Alison Clark-Jenkins, Regional Director, Arts Council England said, ‘This is excellent news for the Maltings. This investment will create a modern, purpose built performance space increasing the opportunities for the people of Berwick to experience great art.'

Ends

For further information contact:

Tamiko Mackie on 01289 330661 x 3 / tamiko.mackie[at]maltingsberwick.co.uk or Miles Gregory on 01289 330 661 x 7 / miles.gregory[at]maltingsberwick.co.uk

Full information on The Maltings Theatre & Cinema: maltingsberwick.co.uk

Download a copy of the annual report & accounts: http://www.maltingsberwick.co.uk/annual-report

The new Henry Travers Studio - a world-class space

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Our new frontage

Many of you may have noticed that we made some improvements to the front of our building late last year. 
For some time we'd felt that the entrance to our theatre was not really exciting or magical enough. In fact, I'd always thought it looked more like the entrance to a sports facility or a community centre.
The building was designed to be unobtrusive. A consultant described the portico in a report a few years ago as 'hiding under a baseball cap', which I felt was about right.
So we wanted to bring some more magic to it - make coming to the theatre more like a night out somewhere exciting, rather than visiting a sports centre. Not that visiting a sports centre isn't exciting... you know what I mean.


Originally, the entrance to our building looked like this. This was how it was left by the builders. It's pretty uninspiring, but it did good service for 10 years. The real problem is that it doesn't tell you what the building does. It could be anything - even, in fact, a Maltings.























This was how the frontage looked in 2008. The white sign was put up around 2001 as part of a revamp. But I thought it wasn't particularly successful, although it was certainly a step up from the original. The white background was unrelated to the dark building, and looked uncomfortable.

In 2009, we painted most of the garden-shed like exterior a heritage green, to make it feel a bit more interesting. We had no real budget for this - but it had to be done.


We painted the white sign background black, removed the star logo from above the i in Maltings, and painted the existing letters an off-white colour. We also painted the black pillars red. A bit more elegant. My father and I did the painting. Thanks Dad! The whole thing cost around £60 - the cost of the paint.

Around a year later, we felt that we should upgrade a bit further. We'd changed the trading name of the theatre from The Maltings Theatre & Arts Centre to The Maltings Theatre & Cinema, to better reflect the artistic programming of the venue. So the old lettered sign, which had done good service, had to be changed. Again, though, we had no money... as usual! So we had to be very inventive. 
I wanted to have something that gave the feeling of this:

But of course we couldn't afford that. Lights seemed to be the key though. Once again, we couldn't afford the cost of having an electrician fit an expensive custom-made marquee. In fact, we couldn't even afford the marquee! Then I remembered that we'd used some great open air festoon lighting for the Sideshow Festival in Berwick in August. I did some research, and we bought a 100 metres of exterior festoon lighting for £110. Then our technician Jimmy and I just tacked it up under the roof. 
So this is what the exterior looked like on day one.

Initially, I wanted us to put mirror tiles on the whole back wall of the entrance, where the clock is in the photo. Jimmy and I drove all over Berwick and found that nobody sold mirror tiles anymore. Too seventies. So we just got on with putting up the lights. It took about seven hours to tack them all up. Jimmy did a great job of making sure they were all lined up nicely. Finally, our then Technical Manager Neil wired the lights into one of the old arc-sodium fittings, after removing the old pair of lights (you just see the old lights on the roof just inside each of the red pillars in the photo above).
That afternoon I realised that we didn't need mirror tiles to create the reflection we wanted. We just needed a reflective surface. So we got the guys from Fantasy prints to cut and install some black perspex. This was the most expensive bit - £300. But it was worth every penny. Here's the guys installing it. Note the new festoon lighting tacked up onto the ceiling.

Thanks Fantasy Prints! You can see the new lettering in the background - all the letters are made of wood and bought online from PoshGraffiti for around £10 a pop. This was the cheapest possible option - and they were perfect.










At dusk, we turned the lights on for the first time - and it looked sensational. All for a total of around £610 and two days work. I reckon that's pretty good value for money for the result.

But when it's completely dark, the lights look even better. The reflection effect in the black perspex is superb.

We're still not completely finished. We need to re-gloss the lower part of the back wall of the entrance, where the 'Theatre & Cinema' letters are. But it's now just the magical and exciting entrance we wanted. Many thanks to my team for all their help.