10:00am Saturday 13th March 2010
BASINGSTOKE youths are taking to the stage for a play about coming of age in the 1940s.
Technical team members of Anvil Arts Youth Performance Group STAX visited Milestones Museum to research their forthcoming production Victory, which is set on May 8, 1945 – VE Day.
The performance group – which consists of 14 to 20-year-olds from Basingstoke as well as Tadley, Newbury, Andover and Yateley – put on their first show, Seen and Heard, last year which explored the drama of teenage life.
STAX’s six-strong technical team is now working on lighting, sound and set design for Victory, and they visited the Basingstoke museum to measure up a bomb shelter.
Stephen Holroyd, technical designer and stage manager for the show, said: “They are going to build an Anderson Shelter and they had to make a scale model 25 times smaller than the real thing so that the director and cast know what it is going to look like, and so the carpenters can build the set.
“There is going to be a banner with war images on it and the team have to build the soundscape and choose and source everything. They get an awful lot out of this.”
Penny Patrick, general assistant on the project, added: “The main emphasis is on developing skills and we set the standards high so it’s a great opportunity.
“Stephen Holroyd creates a really fantastic project for the technical team. They build their own version of the set, work out the lighting and help hang them, and they design and build the set, so it’s really intensive and a great scheme.”
Victory is about Archie, whose coming-of-age birthday coincides with VE Day. The play, directed by Stephen Hall, an associate artist at The Anvil, examines what it was like for young people growing up at the time, as they are forced to become adults quickly, and it is based on the performers’ own research and family memories about living through the aftermath of the conflict.
There are 27 cast members in this show, and the next production in the cycle will be set in the 1950s.
Anyone interested in getting involved with STAX can email stax@anvilarts. org.uk.
Victory is playing at The Haymarket on March 24 at 7pm. Tickets, priced at £5, can be booked at the box office, on 01256 844244, or online at anvilarts. org.uk.
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