Hexham 2007

Last year, The Queen's Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, invited us to create a "prequel" to Tattercoats with a group of 11-14 year olds. We spent a very productive week doing just that and so The Queen's Hall invited us back this year to carry out a similar mission with another group of young teens around Dragon Fish.

And what a great week we had. We couldn't have asked for a livelier and more committed bunch. They seemed quite quiet on the first morning but once we'd launched into some work and they met each other properly over lunch, all changed. They worked swiftly but with intelligence and integrity and we were able both to create a script with some depth - exploring families and friendship - and to spend some quality time on developing performing and acting skills.

Weeks like this are draining but when they work well they are also immensely rewarding.