The 2023 YEP Directors’ Festival has kicked off at Liverpool Everyman Theatre

This year’s  YEP Directors’ Festival s at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre from 11 to 29 July 2023.

The Festival is the culmination of educational courses for 18 to 25 year olds in directing and technical theatre, part of the theatres’ award-winning  Young Everyman & Playhouse  (YEP). This year the Festival includes productions of  Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre; Our House is Condemned, an adaptation of the Oresteia by Aeschylus; Be You Living or Be You Dead directed by Sophie Compton; Stella by Neil Bartlett; X by Alistair McDowall and Far Away by Caryl Churchill. 

Collaborating with technicians and actors from past and present YEP training programmes, each Director selects a play to be performed in the exclusive YEP space EV1 at the Everyman. With tickets priced at just £5, this dedicated space allows the directors to unleash their creativity and explore their craft without concerns or judgments from external sources. The Festival is supported by the Everyman & Playhouse so the directors have the opportunity to work with design, sound, and lighting which adds to the overall experience and allows them to push their ideas to the limit. 

The first show of the Festival is  Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre which will be performed on 11^th and 12^th July. Three twenty-something women figure out how they really feel about sex, their bodies and each other in a whole world of men. Directed by  Esther Johnson, it’s a funny, timely and unapologetic play which interrogates the effects of society’s objectification of women.  

Next on 14^th and 15^th July comes  Be You Living or Be You Dead, directed by Sophie Compton, the play explores grief, belief and what it means to be a big kid. Based on Icelandic folklore and the mysterious Huldufólk or ‘hidden people’, the characters are transported from their world to a new one, rediscovering their childhood along the way.  

X  by Alistair McDowall follows on 19^th July. Billions of miles from home and unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew waits, waiting long enough for time to eat them up and to start seeing things in the dark outside. Directed by Caroline McHale, this sci-fi drama set in a research base on Pluto presents a vision of dystopia.  

Our House is Condemned by Aeschylus is coming up on 21^th  and 22^th July. Adapted from the classic text, the Oresteia, and directed by George Fragakis, gives a modern point of view as this one-man play is set against a roaring punk soundtrack, attempting to remind us of the true rise and fall of power within a world of violence. 

For the last week of the Festival, Neil Bartlett’s Stella on 25^th and 26^th July, inspired by the scandalous true story of Ernest Boulton, the infamous Victorian cross-dresser, a man reflects on his extraordinary life as he awaits a very ordinary death. Directed by Patrick McConville, the playbrings you a highly personal meditation on the fine art of living dangerously.  

Far Away by Caryl Churchill, the country’s greatest living playwright, will be the festival finale on the 28^th and 29^th of July. An authoritarian government turning people against each other, the play challenges the audience to ask themselves and the world around them. Directed by Morven Currie, depicts a society engulfed in war, with civilians terrified of betrayal from every angle. 

This year’s Festival is produced by Young People and Community Producer, Helen Webster. Speaking on behalf of this year’s YEP, Helen said: 

“The Festival is a mini-Fringe of sorts and gives the directors the essential experience of becoming a theatre maker. They are responsible for not only staging their show but taking on all other aspects of the creative process, including technical planning, stage management and marketing, with the support of the in-house professional team at the Everyman Theatre & Playhouse. We provide a vital safe space for directors to test their ideas, challenge themselves and develop their skills so that they can go on to become the next generation of directors and theatre makers. ” 

For more information and tickets at the Everyman Theatre visit their website

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