After spending most of last autumn touring Baked Alaska, Katie Brier is back in the Friargate rehearsal room, now with Roughshod 2016…

Well, I’m back in York with the lovely people at Riding Lights and we are two weeks into our rehearsals for Roughshod 2016. All I can say is… So far so good! Me and the rest of the Roughshod gang are getting along like a house on fire and we seem to be spending a large portion of our time together in absolute fits of laughter (often at very inappropriate moments, much to the dismay of our director…) So much so, I nearly named this blog “MY BELLY HURTS”. I had a good feeling about this company when my rehearsal brief consisted of:

1. Read the Sermon on the Mount
2. Watch loads of comedy. And
3. Bring tap shoes

You can’t really go wrong with criteria like that.

Before I go on, I should probably explain to those of you who are undoubtedly asking “what on earth is Roughshod…?” exactly what it is that I’m getting myself into. Basically, Roughshod is Riding Lights’ community touring company, designed to take theatre to places that might not otherwise get it. As well performing our show Let Loose, we’ll be visiting churches, colleges, community spaces, prisons, universities, schools, running workshops, taking classes, performing in assemblies and church services – basically, anywhere that will have us!

Which leads me on to the first milestone that we overcame last week – our first schools’ workshops. Following a couple of days of VERY comical rehearsals in which we all took it in turns to play the role of school kids whilst other members of the company road tested the games and activities from the workshops, we packed up a random assortment of props and headed to Manor CE Academy in York.

Now, despite being a “grown up” and having had a bit of experience working with “youths”, going into a high school still terrifies me for two reasons:

1. By Year 8, most high school students are already taller than me.
2. I haven’t had the slightest idea about what is “cool” since around 1998.

Meaning that I think I hold very little authority within this particular context!

However, myself and the rest of the Roughshod crew put aside any of our pre-existing fears and delivered two workshops to students in Year 8 and 9, the first on the issues surrounding Social Justice and the second on what it means to have a Christian faith. Neither particularly simple topics to tackle at 9am on a Tuesday!

However, having broken the ice with a few old faithful wacky drama games, both classes did an excellent job of engaging with the activities, sketches and questions that were presented to them. All of the Shoddies are extremely grateful for not only the amount of fun, but also the level of thought-provoking conversation that we had that morning. The students approached the workshops with honesty and good humour in equal measure and the experience was a real reminder of how God is able to multiply what we offer, even when we feel ill-equipped in what we are offering!

The final part of either workshop is a Q&A, in which the students can grill the Shoddies on anything covered in the workshop, their faith or any questions they have about the random life of an actor! Our final question of the day was “so, why did you become a Christian?” I know for those of us that were able to, it was a real privilege share part of our story and talk about something that has provided so much joy and encouragement in our own lives (although we had to be brief as we were dangerously close to cutting into break time!)

So, despite a few jitters and nerve-induced imperfections in our delivery, team Roughshod left our first morning at a school with our dignity still intact and feeling really rather encouraged! Though I think one of the young people summed up the morning far better than I ever could: ‘That was quality. It was good that.’