Fizzy Finn Finds His Feet

FIZZY FINN FINDS HIS FEET by Jon Boustead- a play for all children, especially those who found lockdown made them feel stressed and anxious

Director – Erin Burbridge

Designer – Anna Gooch

Touring to schools and local communities, streaming online as well as live at Friargate Theatre – there must be a way for you to see this fabulous show.

With its magical blend of vivid story-telling, original music and creative puppetry, you’re in for a treat!  

Finn is a fidget. His brain is ablaze with an unbreakable buzz that fizzes to his fingers and tickles his toes…or it would do if he could only find his feet.  ‘Electricity ripples like thunder in my chest and lightning in my brain. I can’t escape!’

Christmas brings surprises and not all of them are nice. It’s a crackling mix of hopes and fears and they’re definitely getting closer.  So Finn is on the run. Can stories help to untangle things? If only someone would listen to Suzy Pettiskew before she bursts. Or stop Barney Box’s dog from growing bigger night by night.  And can anyone really ‘blotzch the Glim’?

Shoes are very good story tellers. You experience a lot by stepping into someone else’s shoes’.  

Fasten your laces! Tie them up tight and join Finn as he discovers Tink the cobbler and her amazing story-telling Shoe Shop. Jump into this crackling Christmas adventure of bravery, fear and finding your feet in a stormy world, exploring the big things troubling young minds today.

 

Streaming Online for primary schools, communities, individual bookings 

Breaking Day Trailer

Book Watch at Home Tickets

Find out about Breaking Day for your Church

Breaking Day

A lockdown Passion Play by Les Ellison

As day begins to break on Good Friday, the occupying Governor’s tenuous grip on authority is slipping. It’s festival time in Jerusalem but his wife is plagued with disturbing dreams. Amid the demands of the Sanhedrin and the murderous cries of the mob, the lines between personal and political in Pilate’s house start to blur.  The teacher at the centre of it all remains silent.

Confused by the hopes and fears of her people, a Jewish servant in the Praetorium clearly knows more than she should. Pilate wrestles with a quandary of his own devising, while outside momentum is gathering – the power of the Capitol in tension with the will of the people.

Created during the lockdowns of early 2021, Breaking Day is a virtual passion play filmed and edited remotely which speaks right to the heart of Easter in our modern world. With start intimacy, it casts a surprising light on the death of Jesus from inside the Governor’s household, immersing us in the decisions that led to crucifixion.

 

You can rent Breaking Day to watch at home for a limited time through Vimeo on Demand or buy a license from us to show to more viewers at church. Our digital programme is free to download below.

 

 

 

You can also watch our trailer below

 

 

Add Drama to Christmas… Online!

A collection of classic Christmas sketches and readings on film from Riding Lights Theatre Company  – perfect for carol services and Christmas events whether they are online or on-site!

These sketches provide great visual content, adding fresh insight and fun to retelling the story of the birth of Christ.

Available individually, or get three sketches in the Nativity Bundle for £20.  Available to purchase now!

Find out more about the sketches on offer in this collection:

*These sketches are in the Nativity Bundle. Use them throughout a carol service or Christmas event to make a compelling journey through the nativity story.

Explore the full collection here

The Selfish Giant

Bring exciting entertainment into every classroom and home with our online version of this hugely popular show…

The Giant is angry. He’s been away for a long time and returns to find children – children! – playing in his beautiful garden!

Every day after school, they come and run about, laughing and playing games under the blossom on his peach trees, listening to the delightful songs of the birds. So, he puts up a big wall and an even bigger KEEP OUT notice to put a stop to all that. Then winter seizes the garden in its icy fingers…  

Will its grip ever be broken?

Suitable for all primary aged children and their families, through vivid storytelling, original music, puppetry and humour, Riding Lights brings you a brilliant story of things changing for the better.  No one can be left unaffected by this inspiring tale of love and generosity.

Discover the episodes

Order The Selfish Giant for your school today

Order The Selfish Giant for your community – info for community groups and organisations

Want to watch it with your family? Watch The Selfish Giant at Home

This engaging show can be viewed in three chapters or watched in one sitting. Filmed for Christmas 2020 but suitable for every season.

Riding Lights has an outstanding reputation for bringing memorable shows to family audiences both nationally and in Yorkshire.

‘That was really fantastic. They’ve had such a good time.’  Teacher, Cawood 

‘Five stars.’ ‘No, ten hundred stars.’  Children, Norton

‘Perfectly pitched for this age group, it was wonderful. The children were so engaged.’ Head Teacher, Kirkbymoorside

adapted from Oscar Wilde by Jon Boustead
Director Paul Burbridge
Designer Anna Gooch

Discover the episodes

Order The Selfish Giant for your school today

Order The Selfish Giant for your community – info for churches, community groups and organisations

Want to watch it with your family? Watch The Selfish Giant at Home

Got questions? Get in touch to find out more touring@rltc.org or 01904 655317
If cost is a barrier for your school or organisation, please get in touch with us to discuss options.

RL Statement on Black Lives Matter

Riding Lights Theatre Company strongly supports the #BlackLivesMatter movement fighting for permanent change within an inherently racist society and for collective freedom for the entire black community.

 

We believe that black lives matter.

We believe in the power of love to change society and allow individual lives to flourish.

We believe in standing up for freedom and equality.

We believe in continuing to educate ourselves and our community to confront racism and to put what we learn into practice.

We believe in telling diverse stories through our performances.

We believe in offering our creative gifts to spread this understanding.

We believe that diversity brings strength and joy.

We believe that generosity makes the world go round.

My Place: announcing a future Riding Lights Tour

a new play by Bridget Foreman on adoption and fostering

in partnership with Home for Good

 

 

Touring dates to be announced. If you are interested in finding out about hosting a performance, please contact Riding Lights on touring@rltc.org

Crosslight on Film – Streaming over Easter

Crosslight, our much loved recent Passion Play, is available to stream now through Vimeo On Demand. In a few days it will also be available to buy through Amazon Prime too.

Why not watch it as part of your Easter celebrations at home and maybe encourage others in your community to watch it too?

 

Stream Crosslight Now

 

The Narrow Road Virtual Tour Part 4

Who are you and which parts did you play?

My name is Johnny and I played Ben Ami, Nicodemus, Barabbas, Judas and one of the pilgrim travellers on The Road.


What is your favourite part of the play?

There’s a great scene between Barabbas and Caiaphas the High Priest.  It’s full of the twists and turns of manipulation, as each man seeks some leverage over the other, while getting around the fact that they heartily detest one another. Bartering with a terrorist like Barabbas is new territory for Caiaphas but he knows he needs inside information.   Caiaphas’s bargaining chip is an offer to keep Barabbas from being arrested and killed by the Roman authorities.  What he wants in return is that they work together on the basis of a common hatred of Jesus.  A fragile and unlikely alliance but, as the Road winds inexorably towards the crucifixion, it creates a significant momentum within the play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What did you learn during the process?

I learned about the difficulty of excavating such a rich text from the added perspective of faith. It meant so much to me beyond the acting and the stagecraft and I wanted to do it justice.  The more I pored over it, the more it began ‘to land’, to bring insights that illuminated my personal journey, as well as the journey of each of my characters.

 

What made you laugh most in rehearsals?

Laughing at John Holden-White’s outrageous stylistic improvisations with his costume.  Very unfair to appear, when you’re least expecting it, with his shirt turned up into a crop top and his strange trousers gathered into … well, only he knows what he was trying to achieve there!

 

The Narrow Road Virtual Tour Part 3

Who are you and who did you play in The Narrow Road?

Hi, I’m Simon Rodda and I played Jesus in The Narrow Road. 

What is your favourite part of the play?

When Jesus is praying, talking to his father, in the garden of Gethsemane. The gospel account tells us that all the disciples fell asleep while Jesus was praying ‘in agony’, so we have to use our imagination about most of what Jesus was saying.  Perfect for an actor, of course, and hugely helped by the language Paul Birch uses to paint vivid pictures of what might have gone through Jesus’s mind in the hours before he was arrested.

The speech starts with the famous cry to God: ‘Father, take this cup away from me,’ but the speech is then peppered with stories from the Old Testament (the ‘sacrifice’ of Abraham’s son Isaac) and what Jesus may himself have witnessed as a child growing up under Roman rule. The night in Gethsemane, where a man is sweating blood while praying to his Father in heaven, combines Jesus’s humanity and his divinity most starkly.

JESUS:       We worked, Joseph and I. His door always open. His tools always allowed in my hands. But…one day the door was shut. My mother pleading with the soldiers outside. Joseph arguing inside with a man whose face I could not see. There were threats. My mother dragged by her hair. The shouting stopped and my father put to work. No scripture passed his lips as he shaped the beams of the crosses. The crosses bound and shaped for the road that leads to this City of Peace.

© 2010 Paul Birch

 

What did you learn during the process?
I found this challenge of playing a character that is both God and man gave me insights into what Jesus was facing and also lessons about my own humanity. The following are a few lines of thought I pondered on as I tried to create Jesus on stage: someone who has complete authority yet is wonderfully personable; a man who works miracles but needs his time away from the crowd; a man committed to obeying the will of God but who knows he still has a choice.

What made you laugh most in rehearsals?
On what turned out to be our last day, once we had been told that the tour couldn’t go ahead, we all agreed that we would continue to rehearse and perform the show in the evening for a small audience, including those that had put so much work into getting this show off the ground. The show went very well and was a privilege to perform. However, after the crucifixion scene, as we had rehearsed many times before, I got carried off stage by my colleagues.  This time, my head smacked on a wooden step and made a booming sound. I was fine but, perhaps owing to the heightened situation or emotion, I couldn’t stop laughing (as quietly as I could) during a solemn moment of reflection. It felt like a fitting prelude to the resurrection scene!