The Railway Children

Mike Kenny is one of the England’s leading writers, specialising in young people’s theatre. He is the recipient of numerous awards, was included in the Independent on Sunday’s list of Top Ten Living UK Playwrights and his plays are performed regularly throughout the UK and all over the world.

Recent productions include original play Scarecrow (AJTC), Great Gran’s Great Games (Pied Piper), A Murder of Crows (Barnstorm, Ireland) and new adaptations of Peter Pan (York Theatre Royal), Aladdin (West Yorkshire Playhouse.)

Credits include: Wild Dreams (Theatre du Rond-Point, Paris); Twin Stars (Unicorn Theatre,London); La Nuit Electrique (Electric Darkness) for Comédie de Valence (France); Who Cares? (Region Theatre, Vaxjo, Sweden); Whiter Than Snow (Graeae, London); Flat Stanley (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Polka, London); The Snow Queen – new version for Cork City of Culture (Graffiti, Ireland); The Little Mermaid (York Theatre Royal and Polka Theatre); Swan Songs (Sherman Theatre, Wales); Boy With a Suitcase (SNAP); On the Verge (Mind the…Gap); The Gardener (AJTC and Nottingham Playhouse); The Last Freak Show (Graeae Theatre); Of Mice and Men (Mind…..the Gap)

He is currently working on a new version of The York Mystery Plays for 2012.

Damian has been Artistic Director of York Theatre Royal for the past thirteen years. He has directed many productions including: To Kill A Mocking Bird, The Wind In The Willows, The Homecoming, The White Crow (Eichmann in Jerusalem), Death of a Salesman, The Railway Children, Patient No. 1, Enjoy, Bouncers 2007 Remix, The Dumb Waiter, The Hare and the Tortoise (in York and Japan), Pygmalion, Broken Glass, East Is East, Hay Fever, Macbeth, A Cloud in Trousers, Brassed Off, Caitlin, A Taste of Honey, Habeas Corpus, Up‘n’Under, Frankenstein, Noises Off, Little Shop of Horrors, Othello, Closer, The Turn of the Screw, Bedevilled, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kafka’s Dick, Man of the Moment, Having a Ball, Romeo and Juliet, Getting On, The Three Musketeers, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, All My Sons, Piaf, Dead Funny, Educating Rita, Frankie and Johnnie at the Clair de Lune, Neville’s Island, Multiplex, Abandonment and Private Lives. He has co-directed the last 12 York Theatre Royal pantos with Berwick Kaler.

Before York, Damian worked for various regional theatres as a freelance director.

He was Associate Director for Hull Truck in the early ‘90s and prior to that Co-Artistic Director of the Liverpool Everyman Youth Theatre. He worked for The Tron and TAG in Scotland and was a tutor for the Scottish Youth Theatre. He trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama between 1982 and 1986.

For 10 years Mark was the Artistic Director of the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, overseeing the artistic transformation of the company from closure to its current buoyant state, consistently winning and being nominated for Manchester Evening News theatre awards and raising the company’s artistic profile and reputation at a local regional and national level. In 2007/8 he produced and directed the majority of the Octagon’s highly successful 40th Anniversary season, breaking several box-office records and achieving consistently high production standards. He stepped down in June 2009 and has since been active in expanding his reputation in film and television as well as directing the acclaimed stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. He has also been trained in single and multi-camera work on Coronation Street and recently finished filming Blackburn for LittleBigMan Films.

Joanna completed a graduate design apprenticeship with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She received the 'Best Set Designer' award at the 2011 Whatsonstage Awards for her site specific design of The Railway Children at the abandoned Eurostar terminal at Waterloo station, London.

As well as the theatrical stage, her work has specialised in promenade and site responsive design, spaces from the epic to the intimate. Recent designs include The Young Pretender (Nabokov, Edinburgh Festival) All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Tangled feet, Greenwich & Docklands International Festival) Blowing (Fanshen, UK Tour) The Caravan (The Royal Court Theatre), Counted? & The Roundhouse History, (The Roundhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Latitude Festival) Economy (BAC) and Platform, at The Old Vic Tunnels, space under Waterloo. Her other design work includes Inches Apart; Old Vic New Voices Award at Theatre 503, Cardboard Dad; Sherman Cymru, Wagstaffe; Mercury Theatre, Paradise; Sheffield Crucible Theatres, The Spidermen; National Theatre, Cottesloe.

Joanna is committed to producing exciting new design for performance.

www.joannascotcher.com

Richard first lit the The Railway Children at The National Railway Museum York for which he was nominated for a TMA Theatre Award for Best Lighting Design. He also lit the actor musician Broadway Production of Sweeney Todd at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, for which he won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design and was also nominated for an Outer Circle Critics Award.

Richard has worked extensively at York Theatre Royal and recent work includes The Homecoming, Twelfth Night, Death of a Salesman, A Man for all Seasons, Three Men in a Boat, and Twinkle Little Star. Richard’s West End work includes Sunset Boulevard, Mack and Mabel, The Gondoliers, Female Parts, When Pigs Fly, Carmen and Horrid Henry Live and Horrid. UK national tours include To Kill a Mockingbird, Beautiful Thing, Wuthering Heights, Candide, Canterbury Tales and Spongebob Squarepants the sponge that could fly!

Richard is currently working on designs for My Family and Other Animals, Two Planks and a Passion and Peter Pan for York Theatre Royal, A Way Upstream for Salisbury Playhouse and Celebrating Christmas 2011 for the Salvation Army at the Royal Albert Hall.

With over 25 years experience, Chris has written original scores for more than 150 productions for theatre, film, television and radio. His work at the Theatre Royal, York includes: My Family and Other Animals, The Crucible, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Wind in the Willows, Twelfth Night, Death of a Salesman, The Railway Children, A Man for All Seasons, Pinocchio, Bouncers, Broken Glass, Pygmalion, Hobson’s Choice, Macbeth, The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, Brassed Off, The Pocket Dream, A Taste Of Honey, Caitlin, Private Lives, Abandonment, All My Sons, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Three Musketeers, Habeas Corpus, Up ‘n’ Under, The Glass Menagerie, Frankenstein, The Snow Queen, Having A Ball, Disco Pigs and Romeo And Juliet.

Credits for other theatres include: Comedy Theatre West End, Bolton Octagon; Southwark Playhouse, Shaw Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, Riverside Studios; Crucible Theatre, Hull Truck, and Chester Gateway. Chris was also a long time collaborator with Compass Theatre Company having written over 15 shows for them. His work for television and radio includes: Two Lives, One Body for ITN; Behind The Scenes At The Museum, The Midnight House and The Midwich Cuckoos (nominated for the Sony International Radio Drama Awards) all for BBC Radio Four.

Commercial work includes the current Fisherman’s Friend TV campaign and he has held workshops at The Globe and for the National Youth Theatre. His corporate work has toured throughout Europe and Australia and his charity work includes: Save the Children and Safepoint.

Chris was also Artist in Residence at University College Bretton Hall.

In 2011 Craig was nominated for an Olivier award for best sound design for The Railway Children, and was commissioned by the City of London Festival to compose Dusk Chorus, a large-scale multi-speaker installation in collaboration with David Lumsdaine and the choreographer Rachel Lopez De La Nieta. In 2010 he was commissioned by the Laurence Sterne Trust, York Theatre Royal and Arts Council England to compose a digital opera based on “A Sentimental Journey” (1768). In the same year he was commissioned by Exhibition Road Cultural Group and PRS Foundation to create Flow to celebrate World Music Day and the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Ismaili Centre, London. Superfield [Mumbai] (2009) commissioned by Bradford Mela and Mumbai Festival incorporated found sounds and music from the streets of Mumbai weeks after the terrorist attacks of 2008.

During 2003-4 he held the Arts Council England Fellowship with the British Antarctic Survey, which resulted in a large-scale composition created from field recordings. In 2006 Unicorn Theatre, London commissioned Play: Antarctica about these experiences. In 1997 he co-founded the pop group Cousteau, which made 300,000 sales worldwide and gained a gold disc. Singing Ringing Buoy, an installation at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall (2007-8), was shortlisted for the 2005 PRS New Music Award.

www.ev2.co.uk/vear

At the National Theatre: Frankenstein, The Mysteries, The Good Hope (also UK tour); Old Times, A Doll's House (Donmar Warehouse); Bad Man Christmas (HMP Wormwood Scrubs); The Wizard Of Oz and Sandi Toksvig’s Christmas Cracker (Royal Festival Hall); Singular Sensations (Haymarket Theatre); Baby Doll (Albery Theatre); Alex (Arts Theatre, UK and international tour); Happy Now? (Hull Truck Theatre); Twelfth Night, Slice of Saturday Night (Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch); Mike Leigh’s It’s A Great Big Shame, Moti Roti Puttli Chunni, Running Dream (Theatre Royal Stratford East); The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Treasure Island, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Kindertotenlieder, Angela Carter’s Cinderella, Cause Celebre, Mrs Warren’s Profession, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lyric Theatre Hammersmith).

Future projects include The Wiz at Birmingham Rep and the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Associate Sound Designer for Mary Poppins (UK national tour and Circustheater Scheveningen), My Fair Lady (UK and US national tours), Backbeat (Citizens Theatre Glasgow), Acorn Antiques (UK national tour), The Witches (UK national tour), Return To The Forbidden Planet(UK national tour), Soul Train (UK tour).

Ed is also front-of-house sound engineer for Van der Graaf Generator, and has previously toured with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Blue Man Group, The John Tams Band, Evelyn Glennie, and Talvin Singh.