Angie Johnson talks to one of the area’s most promising playwrights

For their second in-house production, North Wall Theatre have assembled an impressive collection of talented young people who are really going places. The team behind their new show, Fast Track, include author Catriona Kerridge, director Lucy Maycock, and local band Wild Swim. These are all people on the ‘fast track’ to exciting careers and their collaboration promises great things.

Since 2007, North Wall has run pioneering outreach schemes for aspiring young artists with the aim of overcoming the barriers that prevent so many talented practitioners from finding an entry into careers in the arts. Every summer 30 young people aged 18-25 are selected for a place on their free residential programme. The participants are paired with a profess-ional theatre company and over three weeks they can explore ideas and develop new work. This production of Fast Track is the next step in the initiative as the writer, designer and all of the actors are former participants of the programme.

Fast Track is set in a city park where six characters’ lives converge on one life-changing day. The one element they have in common is a challenging relationship with money. It is a bold and darkly funny exploration of the constant challenges of city life faced by those that live there.

At 27, author Catriona Kerridge, who grew up in Oxford, is one of our brightest up-and-coming play-wrights. She left Oxford to take a drama degree at Birmingham University. “That’s where I first started to write plays.’ she tells me. “When I began the university course I wasn’t sure exactly where it would take me, but in one part of the programme we experimented with playwriting and I loved it.” She went on to study at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, and early signs of her promise as a writer were indicated when she was selected for a place on the prestigious Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme.

I ask Kerridge if Fast Track is set in Oxford or any of the cities where she has studied. “Yes and no,” she replies. “It’s influenced by all the cities I have ever lived in, but it’s about any and all urban green spaces — from Florence Park to Hampstead Heath. “What is so specifically interesting about city parks?” I enquire. ‘Parks are used by a cross-section of society. When I would look out from my window on to people running, cycling, walking, or just sitting and chatting I used to imagine their stories. It struck me strongly that these people I was watching were having their private thoughts in such public places, and I wanted to probe that.”

Kerridge speaks very highly of the North Wall’s project.

“They are amazingly supportive and provide resident artists with an opportunity to test out ideas. This play has grown out of my experience with them and the production team are developing it even further. For instance, it was Lucy Maycock, the director, who brought Wild Swim on board to create tracks for the show. She knew they would be the perfect fit.”

Fast Track’s director, Lucy Maycock, (who is also North Wall’s Artistic Director) is passionate about the play. “Catriona is an exciting new voice in British playwriting,” she said. “Her work is full of humour, compassion and intelligence. It’s been wonderful to direct a script written by someone who isn’t afraid to tackle big issues head on.” Maycock also brings exciting ideas to the staging. “Our theatre is both epic and intimate,” she comments. “The audience will watch the play in the round, and we’ve designed it so that there is a racetrack that circles the space behind the seating.

“By being right in the thick of it, the audience won’t be able to ignore the frenetic urgency of these characters’ lives.’

Fast Track
North Wall, Summertown
October 2-4
Call: 01865 319450