Firebird Theatre Newsletter, January 2014



From The Breadhorse, March 2013: "And we ran the stars"

 

Happy New Year to all our friends and supporters and thank you for your support during 2013; it is much appreciated and valued by everyone in Firebird Theatre.

During this New Year we are going to try to send more regular updates and newsletters to let you know what we are doing.

Please feel free to contact us if you want to know more and we will do our best to answer your questions and give you the information you need.

News in brief

Two new Trustees

Firebird Trustees: l to r: Jo, Jane, Gary, Antigoni and Judy

We voted two new Trustees onto Firebird at our Annual General Meeting on November 30^th 2013. We are proud to welcome Antigoni Messaritaki and Jane Edwards Reynolds to the Firebird team and look very forward to working with them both.

The Stephen Knight Memorial Workshop Fund
 

Kathryn Hunter and Steve during The Baby in the Hat workshop

We have received £964.25 so far in donations towards an overall total of £1750 to run one workshop a year for 5 years in memory of Steve. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this Fund. We will start planning the first workshop soon and hope that our patron Kathryn Hunter can be our first workshop leader – she had a very special respect for Steve’s work as a performer and they were good friends. 



Steve and Kathryn working together in the workshop

 

Funding and donations

Many thanks also to Trusts, Foundations, Friends and Supporters, and others who have donated money or made grants to Firebird over the last few months. We have no other sources of funding and Firebird depends on these to keep us going.

Most recently we have received a grant of £1000 from the Odin Trust, who has said it will give us the same amount for the next 3 years, which is great news.

Also, we have received a cheque for £250 from the Burges Salmon Charitable Trust.

Our new trustee, Antigoni Messaritaki, has initiated a collection at her place of work and they have raised £181.80 for Firebird.

John Sallis and Joe Wylie raised £344.65 for Firebird by getting sponsors for taking part in the Boxing Day Run in Clevedon.



Joe, number 390,  running for Firebird




John, number 388, running for Firebird

We are currently working with Theatre Bristol to complete our 3 year Business Plan, when this is done we will be making applications to Arts Council England and other Trusts and Foundations to help us fund the work we want to do over the next 3 years.

Please feel free to help Firebird by encouraging people to join our Friends and Supporters Scheme; small regular donations can make all the difference to Firebird and help us plan our finances in a better way. People can find more information about joining the Scheme, or supporting Firebird with a ‘one-off’ donation by going onto our website: http://www.firebird-theatre.co.uk/supportus.pdf. Alternatively contact us by post or telephone, see contact details below

What we want to do over the next 3 years

We would like to perform The Breadhorse again in a venue outside Bristol. We would like to show more people our work and it would also help us to get better known with audiences outside Bristol as well. If we do this, it would mean us working with a different choir and making new links.

We would also like to plan and design short performances for young disabled people and children. We would like to invite audiences of disabled children and young people into our rehearsal space at Bristol Old Vic once a week for no longer than an hour, over a period of 3 - 4 weeks. We would like these performances to be about introducing audiences to every aspect of the theatre from coming into a space to seeing a performance; we would also like the audience to get involved in the performance through story telling, roles, costume, sound, music, voice, props, and lighting and planned activities that could be taken back into school during the week.
 

Presenting an idea for new work at Firebird's Annual General Meeting, November 2013

We are planning new work for 2015 to celebrate our 25^th anniversary. We would like the new work to be around our own stories, who we are and how we feel; what is important and meaningful to us. At the same time, we would like our new work to celebrate the theatre as a place where we have been able to tell stories. In 1990, Firebird – then known as the Portway Players - performed Yellow Sun, Red Moon at Bristol Old Vic as a lunchtime performance.
 

Presenting  ideas for new work at the Annual General Meeting, November 30th 2013
 

Coming up!

We will be rehearsing and practising for a performance and presentation we are doing as part of a Conference for medical professionals at Bristol Royal Infirmary on February 24^th.

We will also be planning a workshop day for people who have expressed an interest in becoming a member of Firebird Theatre. We will follow-up this day with auditions, dates to be confirmed.

We met with members of Made in Bristol (M in B) at the Bristol Old Vic before Christmas. We did some sharing of work and had mince pies and coffee and tea. We will be meeting again on 31^st January. We are hoping to meet every so often, do some sharing and see what comes out of our time together.

Getting together: Made in Bristol and Firebird at Bristol Old Vic on Friday 6th December

Derby-based Theatre Company, Hubbub Theatre, have asked if members of Firebird would run a workshop for them in August. 

 

We will be in touch again soon and, until then, best wishes from us all in Firebird Theatre