The National Youth Theatre are collaborating with the University of Hull on a new production On the Edge, which will be performed live at the global UN climate conference, COP26 in Glasgow at 12.30 on Friday 5 November.
The sold-out production will be live-streamed via the COP26 YouTube channel and available to view world-wide.
On the Edge will explore young peoples’ eco-anxiety in the face of climate uncertainty through the power of spoken word, poetry, music, and short film. T
he production will be performed live at COP26 next month by 11 young performers aged 18-26 who are members of National Youth Theatre’s network of young creative people. It will include a new commission, I Don’t Care a 30-minute short play written and directed by Adeola Yemitan and a Climate Cabaret, curated and directed by award-winning political playwright and director Tatty Hennessy. Adeola Yemitan graduated from the NYT’s award-winning REP Company in 2021, made her professional debut in the critically acclaimed Antigone at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester in October, won the 2020 Samsung Spotlight Prize and recently was invited to join the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective. Tatty Hennessy adapted George Orwell’s Animal Farm to critical acclaim for the NYT REP Company earlier in 2021, other credits include F* Off for NYT in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal and A Hundred Words for Snow.
The performances will be followed by a Q&A with NYT members, creatives and Briony McDonagh, Professor of Environmental Humanities at University of Hull. Academics from the Energy and Environment Institute and AHRC-funded project ‘Risky Cities’ at the University of Hull led research and development workshops as part of the co-creative process. They will attend rehearsals as well as contribute to the final performance in Glasgow.
On the Edge is part of MELT, National Youth Theatre’s multi-year response to the climate crisis in partnership with scientists from the University of Hull’s Energy and Environmental Institute and a panel sustainable energy industry experts including Jane Cooper, Head of Stakeholder & Regulatory Affairs UK at Ørsted, Dr Giles Davidson, Project Lead, Ark – National Flood Resilience Centre at University of Hull Energy & Environment Institute, Danielle Lane, Head of Asset Value & Partnering at Vattenfall and Melanie Onn, Deputy Chief Executive at RenewableUK. Find out more at www.nyt.org.uk/ontheedge
