Productions and Entertainment

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West End Stars to make Waves at the Everyman

On 4th March 2024 the RNLI celebrated 200 years of saving lives at sea. Throughout 2024, the charity is running events and activities to commemorate the charity's history, celebrate the lifesaving service it provides today and inspire generations of future lifesavers and supporters.

Facing The Waves is a new musical from Dogwood Productions whose recent shows have toured England and been heard on BBC Radio 4. It features songs and music from the award-winning composer, Alastair Collingwood.

Dogwood is honoured to be the official theatre partner for the RNLI as it celebrates its 200thanniversary in 2024.

The show brings together an iconic Victorian hero and a young mum from the present day, juggling family, career and crewing the lifeboat. Will it be going off to sea or chips for tea?

Facing The Waves celebrates our relationship with the sea, life in coastal towns and the extraordinary work of the people who crew the lifeboats. Part of our brief is to encourage young people to participate in, and experience theatre and to view it both as a potential career path as well as enriching the community by providing professional theatre in areas not typically served by larger theatre providers. We are as a result, delighted and grateful that Spennymoor Town Council have financed some tickets for local school pupils and we will endeavour to meet with them and talk about the show.

Alastair Collingwood has been a composer for over 30 years and written scores for numerous theatres shows including London's West End. His TV credits include the music for French and Saunders; the sitcom Mad About Alice; and How Clean Is Your House? amongst many others.

Eliza Shea trained at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts and whilst working in the USA appeared in Your Alice Off-Broadway; Me and the Girls, and Fairycakes. Other performances included roles in Julius Caesar; Blithe Spirit; Wendy Darling & Peter Pan. She went on to win the New York Innovative Theatre Award.

Back in the UK Eliza's many stage appearances include Your Alice (Arcola); Or Nearest Offer (Almeida); Romeo & Juliet (Churchill Theatre); Fine, Thanks (Savoy); and Little Pieces of Gold (Southwark Playhouse).

Her TV work includes The Secrets of Quantum Physics (BBC / Amazon) and she can be heard with Christopher Eccleston in an audio drama version of Doctor Who.

Duncan Drury trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His work includes Trainspotting: The Musical, Dr Frank 'n' Furter in The Rocky Horror Experience (Wyrley Productions), Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of The Baskervilles (Lantern Light) and MacBeth (Churchill Theatre Bromley).Just So (The Barn), Marco Polo (Shaw Theatre), Into The Woods, Mr Sloane in Entertaining Mr Sloane, Endgame (all Emporium), What The Lady Bird Heard (Birmingham Town Hall), Twelfth Night (The Yard Players), The Merchant of Venice, Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night's Dream (BSC).

Roberta Bellekom trained at East 15 Drama School. She appeared recently in Another Winter's Tale, touring North Yorkshire. She has recently completed a national tour with the CBBC show, Sarah and Duck, after appearing in Villain Interrupted at the Vaults Theatre, London. Roberta took the lead in the award-winning play, Rotterdam, and toured with Norwich Puppet Theatre's Pinocchio and in Seagulls Saved The World, touring Cornwall. This followed an extensive tour in David Walliams' Awful Auntie, playing the West End and major theatres throughout the UK.

Facing the Waves

will be performed at 7.30pm on SUNDAY 6th October 2024 at :

Spennymoor Settlement's Everyman Theatre, O'Hanlan Street, Spennymoor, DL16 6RY

Tickets for Facing the Waves are available online at:www.dogwoodproductions.co.uk/boxoffice or from:

The Studio, (Photographers) 75, High Street, Spennymoor.

Malcolm Marsden of Spennymoor Settlement says " We look forward to hosting this new musical, particularly as it focuses on the valuable service given by the volunteers of the RNLI and in particular, the Whitby Lifeboat." "In 2022 we lost one of our oldest, and longest serving members, at 101, who continued to 'tread the boards' at the Everyman well into her mid nineties, and we were thrilled to hear that her family had remembered her with the name of Lillian Whitehead being added to the side of the recently commissioned, Whitby Lifeboat".

Tickets at

www.spennymoorsettlement.co.uk, or from The Studio, (Teasdale Photographers) High Street, Spennymoor

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Later this Year