The performances of Julius Caesar that took place last summer in Norfolk were the product of three weeks of intensive training.  Students from the Royal Northern College of Music arrived in the small village of South Creake, near the north Norfolk coast in a beautiful part of rural East Anglia, where they stayed in the Yorke Trust’s Creake Centre and rehearsed in the Old Chapel nearby ...

 
 

Graham Merriam is a professional cabinet maker and former accountant – he was Honorary Treasurer of the Yorke Trust for several years.  Here he builds some essential items for the stage – everything is done from scratch and from the beginning of the rehearsal period ‘all hands on deck’ is the company motto, with students given various tasks as the production is developed.
If the weather is fine, morning physical warm-ups take play in the orchard with Tai Chi, but every year there is something different.  The outside performance circle at the back of the Old Chapel is useful when the grass is wet!
In the summer of 2001 Robert Alderson took the company in the Old Chapel with a series of increasingly taking vocal exercises to improve diction and tone.  Then, later in the day when work was done, he led regular croquet meetings at the other end of the village.
Coaching sessions take place throughout the day whenever a piano can be found, and by the end of the first week of any production the company is working mostly off copy.

 

The medieval church of St. Mary's, just across the meadow from the Trust's centre, has become second home to the Easter choral concerts and the summer opera.
The stage, chairs, lighting equipment and the wardrobe is carried from the centre to the church by everyone - and it's great fun!
 

 

 

 

The wide nave of St. Mary's and the absence of fixed pews enables us to perform opera 'in the round'.  This is a real challenge, but it gives both greater scope to the director Jennifer Hamilton, and it enhances the student learning experience in many ways.
Lighting is always minimal - there are very few plugs in the church!  But we have devised ways of strapping equipment to the pillars and of making use of every nook and crannie in the building for theatrical effects.