“‘Vulnerable and Raw,
SUNNY SIDE is devastating in its Ordinariness’”
About
Sunny | Side is a brand-new dance theatre work that raises awareness of the mental health epidemic faced by young people across the UK.
Informed directly by the target audience (14-30yrs), the work addresses the real-life experiences shared with the company by over 750 young people across the UK. These stories have been collected via Northern Rascals' in-depth, co-creative practice in studios, schools and digitally over a 3 year period.
Fulfilling Northern Rascals’ commitment to creating socially impactful work that is driven directly by the demand of it's target audience; Sunny | Side sets to be a cleverly current work that exists as a raw and authentic portrayal of the modern youth experience. It tackles sensitive and real issues such as depression and suicide, to implore its audience to recognise and validate the struggle that is commonplace in the lives of so many of our nations young people.
With 1 in 6 school-aged children suffering from a mental health problem & a 10-year delay between displaying symptoms and getting help (Office for National Statistics 2020), Sunny | Side intends to add to the conversation, raise awareness and offer signposting for further support and help.
Synopsis
Sunny | Side follows a central character, K, who is struggling through his adolescence in what should be a period of immense social and personal growth. His development has been stunted by a world on pause, where prospects are uncertain, emotional literacy is confused, and his sense of touch, support and identity has been lost. Faced with a lack of emotive language and an increasingly complex mental state, K grasps onto the past, present and the future in a bid to understand when things changed.
Narrative
Sunny Side is set in a small English Everytown, neither city, suburb nor rural village with Dog Poo Alley and Hell Hole Woods. Somewhere near Manchester but in God’s Own County, apparently unique yet decidedly ordinary. Here in this self-proclaimed ‘rain-soaked paradise’, we meet our protagonist K who’s taking a year out in a drifting adolescent life.
Lost in the absence of preoccupied friends, K is left with bloated days, working part time at a dying local business and coming home to an emotionally unequipped household. K once found relief in his old stomping grounds: the park, the stream, the old bus shelter. But now the park is full of new families, the shelter sandblasted into another art deco coffee shop. A run-down newsagent’s paint chips off onto the Organic Wholefood store next door. The working man’s club once filled to the brim with Yorkshiremen’s spirit now quietly aches beside a craft brewery micro pub.
A town of two sides: old versus new, indigenous versus gentrified. Shade versus light. And still nowhere that seems to fit K. In an attempt to understand and reconnect, K revisits pivotal moments, memories, and important relationships of his life.
“evocative and beautiful - the space morphs and merges with the lighting and the movement to beautifully capture the restrictions of our inner world” ”
Outreach
Northern Rascals understand that places and people thrive when there’s a collaborative approach to culture. Therefore, we have purposefully selected a variety of outreach experiences for our community of young people (aged 14-30years) to experience and co-create the finished product of SUNNY | SIDE. These include workshops and residencies in places where they live (virtual), where they go to learn (York St John) and where they spend their spare time (Wainsgate Chapel Community Centre). This allows the creative community to engage with the company’s and their own creative practice on their own terms.
To further our wish to work in ways that is valuable to our community and offers the easiest route to creative expression, we will offer different inlets for young people and local artists to access the work. This includes open class, open rehearsals and sharings.
Thanks to SUNNY | SIDE , we will be able to offer regular training to the professional community local to where the activity takes place, allowing our sector to continue to build momentum, improve skills and fulfil its potential.
OUTREACH BREAKDOWN:
2 days of Introductory workshops at Wainsgate Chapel, for local young people from hard-to-reach communities in Calderdale and Kirklees to recruit for longer intensive
3 day intensive in collaboration with Invictus Wellbeing Intensive and Square Chapel for local young people from hard-to-reach communities in Calderdale and Kirklees
3 day intensive at The Middle Floor with local young people from highly engaged communities
5 day professional residency at York St John University, where students will be engaged via open class and rehearsals
3 workshops on day of performances at York St John University, SQ Chapel, Stage @ Leeds
Open class for local community for 5 creation weeks
Open rehearsals weekly for all 5 weeks
Weekly sharings for 5 weeks
Team
Creation & Direction Northern Rascals
Collaborative Dance Artists Soul Roberts,
Bea Cz, Ed Mitchell
Playwright Anna Holmes
Digital Artist Aaron Howell
Set & Costume Design Caitlin Mawhinney
Lighting Design Barnaby Booth
Composer Wilfred Kimber
Voice Actors Lamin Touray,
Jonny Aubrey Bentley, Brendan Barclay
Photographer Elly Welford
Videographer Genevieve Reeves
Dramaturg Geoff Colman
Production Manager Adam Goode
Marketing Officer Josephine Sillars
Access Officer Chloe Clarke
Understudy Dancer To Be Recruited
Audio Describer Chloe Clarke
Creative Captioner Ben Glover
““The movement and writing all come together to make something that I’ve never seen before...I would never in a million years have dreamt of something like this.”
“The decision to write a script using language of such depth and poeticism, and spoken by a Northern, working-class man is a brave political act.”
Details
Building on our 3 phases of ACE-funded research, our aims for the creation and development phase of SUNNY | SIDE are to:
Create an interdisciplinary performance work for traditional theatre settings that highlights the mental health issues of young people (YP) aged 14-30.
undertake activity with a high-quality, collaborative team over 5 weeks with support from Barnsley Civic (NPO), York St John University, Wainsgate Chapel, Stage@Leeds, CAPA College, The Middle & 3 Dancers, Digital Artist, Designer, 3 Actors, Composer, Dramaturg, Rehearsal Director & an Access Officer, including open rehearsals, open professional contemporary-led dance classes, and virtual/in real life sharings
Undertake a small pilot tour in a range of traditional performance settings across the North at York St John University, Square Chapel (NPO), Stage@Leeds
Create a Marketing & Tour Pack with a Marketer, Filmmaker & Photographer for a future nationwide tour in 2024
Undertaking outreach with target audience of young people (14-30) in engaged and underserved communities, ensuring that the voices of young people are reflected in SUNNY | SIDE, & to co-create with young people at each stage of the process. This will occur with outreach partners at Invictus Wellbeing Charity, York St John University, , The Middle Floor, Wainsgate Chapel, where young persons will feed into the creation of Sunny Side
Undertake organisational development inc. strategic planning & development of company infrastructure with Maddy Morgan. They will look at developing Northern Rascals’ infrastructure & management processes and planning for the next 5 years
Links
Reviews for Northern Rascals’ Work
AUDIENCE
"BRAVE AND POETIC, THIS COMPANY DOES EXACTLY WHAT IT WANTS TO DO"
"A COMPOSITION OF PHYISCAL AND SOUND AND VISUAL THAT IS FULL OF DEPTH"
"ITS BEYOND WORDS, I COULD FEEL THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR WOES. THE WRITING IS BEAUTIFUL. DREAMLIKE - YOU WILL GET LOST IN IT"
"THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING ELSE I'VE EVER SEEN"
"EVOCATIVE AND BEAUTIFUL - THE SPACE MORPHS AND MERGES WITH THE LIGHTING AND THE MOVEMENT TO BEAUTIFULLY CAPTURE THE RESTRICTIONS OF OUR INNER WORLD"
"CAPTIVATING, POWERFUL, POETIC AND BEAUTIFUL. ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL"
"THE PRODUCTION, MOVEMENT AND WRITING ALL COME TOGETHER TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT I'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE...I WOULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS HAVE DREAMT OF SOMETHING LIKE THIS. IT WAS ENIGMATIC, POETIC AND ROMANTIC"
PRESS
'A CLEVER, VIBRANT AND CHALLENGING PIECE' - NORTH WEST END
'IMAGINATIVELY IMPRESSIONISTIC' - THE REVIEWS HUB
'TIMELY... PLACES YOUNG PEOPLE FRONT AND CENTRE' - THE STAGE
'EMOTIVE AND MOVING' - WEST END BEST FRIEND
'THIS FILM MUST BE WATCHED' - YORKSHIRE TIMES
'HEARTFELT AND POIGNANT' - REVIEWER NUMBER 9
