Chichester People’s Theatre launches for 2023 - auditions open

Created by the CFT’s learning, education and participation (LEAP) department, it will bring together 20 people from across the community with a view to staging a public performance during July at the Festival of Chichester. “Our brand-new People's Theatre initiative will give 20 people aged 25+ the opportunity to work with artists and professional theatre-makers to devise an original piece of theatre,” Louise Rigglesford, senior community and outreach manager at the CFT, said. “Those interested in forming this company will be invited to make an application and attend an audition workshop at the theatre on Saturday, January 21. Successful auditionees will be invited to attend weekly sessions on Thursday evenings between February and July. The deadline for registering interest in attending the audition is 5pm on Monday, January 16, with more information and application form available on the CFT website.”

Louise added: “We spent quite a lot of time last year listening to our current participants across all our community outreach work, just asking them what they wanted to do. We had the consultation and several things came out of that. One of the things that people wanted was an opportunity to create a piece of theatre that they could perform. Within other groups we do have a kind of sharing at the end of the term of the work that we have done but some of the participants were wanting something where they could sink their teeth a little bit deeper into it and that's what the People’s Theatre is going to do. We're going to be auditioning for 20 people. We are looking for people that are really strong on collaboration, the ability to work with others. They don't need to have ever made a piece of theatre before or even to have performed before but just to be interested in other people and working with them. We will rehearse on Thursdays for several months to create an original piece of theatre. We will be looking at the shows in Festival 2023. We might go and see some of the shows and reflect on them or it might be that we're looking at the scripts or the scenes but the focus will be dictated by the people within the group as to what we actually create. It is open to anybody age 25-plus and I'm really keen, given the consultation that we had, that all our different groups are represented. I'm really keen that we have people with learning disabilities, just all the different backgrounds, people from all different ways of life. I genuinely want it to be an opportunity for everybody. If we're making something with lots of people with different ways of thinking and different approaches then it will be so much the richer.”

Louise has a venue in mind but it isn't quite confirmed yet: “I would like to think that we would do a couple of performances across maybe two or three evenings. People were wanting to have the chance to do something more than once.” And part of the excitement is that at this stage Louise hasn't got a clue what the piece will be: “As a theatre-maker I'm more comfortable working that way than perhaps having a script in front of me. I can feel quite hemmed in!”