THE NEW VIC – A THEATRE EMBEDDED IN ITS COMMUNITY

An interview with Sue Moffat and Gemma Thomas, by Belinda Kidd

Image: Luminarium at the Big Feast 2024, created by Architects of Air, Artistic Director Alan Parkinson. Photo credit: Andrew Billington

The New Vic is a special and engaging venue. I don’t know of anywhere else that has quite the same blend of great theatre and entertainment performed in-the-round, alongside political edge, life changing work with young people at risk, outdoor work and community projects around Newcastle-under-Lyme and the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent, education work with both younger and older people – and the latest addition, a circus partnership programme with Upswing inspired by the local connection with the founder of modern circus, Philip Astley, who was born locally. All this takes place in its purpose-built theatre-in-the-round, set in its own sustainably managed wildlife garden.

A packed theatre with tiered seating surrounding a central stage decorated with a large Christmas tree and a small table, for a performance of a Christmas show, with a green illuminated floor.

Interior of The New Vic, “The Nutcracker” 2024. Photo credit: New Vic.

A theatre building with signs saying New Vic Theatre and a display of posters for upcoming shows, surrounded by trees and shrubs.

Exterior of the New Vic, 2024. Photo credit: Andrew Billington

North Staffordshire

The local area has many challenges, with all the changes that have taken place over the past 50 years, but there is a resilient community spirit – people do not accept the relentless portrayal of post-industrial blight. The North Staffordshire Miners’ Wives Group is still going strong, active in supporting local families and combating the negative perceptions around the outcome of the miners’ strike in 1984 -“Thatcher is long gone but we are still here. Who lost? We are still here and still fighting. You only lose when you don’t stand up and you don’t resist for your community.” – Rose Hunter (Chair of North Staffs Miners’ Wives Association Group). The New Vic recently worked with NSMWAG and writer Lisa Blower to create The Miner Birds, commemorating the 40^th anniversary of the strike. The show has toured around the local area taking its own specially converted caravan (like the one used by the women in their occupation of Trentham Colliery in 1984), with a performance at the theatre itself in March 2025.

Three women seated near a retro caravan with protest banners. The caravan has a large red banner reading "North Staffs Miners Wives Trentham Pit Camp". Two other signs read "Save Trentham Colliery" and "Save Our Pits". The woman on the left has red hair and jeans. The woman in the middle wears a white coat and patterned trousers. The woman on the right has red jacket and jeans.

“The Miner Birds” Caravan at the New Vic. Photo credit Andrew Billington.

History of the New Vic: The Victoria Theatre Company – Documentary Theatre

The Victoria Theatre Company started in a converted cinema in Stoke in 1962, before moving to its current venue in 1986 – the first purpose-built theatre-in-the-round in Europe – i.e. a venue with the stage in the middle and the audience seated all-round the stage. This format, with ancient roots, was pioneered in the US from the 1920s onwards, then brought to the UK by Stephen Joseph during the 1950s and 60s, touring around the country with this flexible, egalitarian way of working, eventually settling into his own venue in Scarborough. The New Vic’s founding director, Peter Cheeseman, worked with Stephen Joseph and they often visited Stoke-on-Trent. Once the New Vic opened, Peter created a host of political verbatim dramas, using the words of the potters, the miners and the steelworkers of the local community – including The Jolly Potters (1963), Fight for Shelton Bar (1974), Miner Dig the Coal (1981) and Nice Girls (1993) amongst many others.

Black and white photograph of 5 actors in a theatre show. A man in a suit is speaking passionately, flanked by others holding protest signs. Signs read "SOS Save Our Shelton", "We Demand The Right to Work", and "No To The Dole, No To Redundancy, No To Closure." The background is dark.

Fight for Shelton Bar! showing Graham Watkins as Ted Smith singing. In the background, left to right – David Miller, Alun Bond, Robert Aldous. Photo credit: Chris Knapton, Victoria Theatre Archive.

Black and white photograph of a group of seven men in suits and coats, some holding a microphone, standing on a platform overlooking an industrial site with smokestacks and buildings. One man wears a white hard hat with sunglasses.

Research for Fight for Shelton Bar! showing Peter Cheeseman and Graham Watkins interviewing members of the Action Committee, November 1973. Photo credit: Robert Smithies, Victoria Theatre Archive.

The New Vic Today: Representing Local People and Local Voices

The theatre’s current vision commits it to levering the transformational power of theatre to drive meaningful social change… to enrich lives, foster positive dialogue and drive positive social impact. The theatre’s current Artistic Director, Theresa Heskins – only the third director in the theatre’s history – says:

“all the work we do is work in our community – even when we’re in Leeds or London or New York, it’s still about representing local people and local voices.”

The theatre works with its communities in many different ways:

Borderlines, established in 1999, engages with young people caught up in the criminal justice system, looked after children, younger children and their families, members of marginalised communities, people with physical and learning disabilities, and unaccompanied refugee and asylum seeking children
Appetite, an Arts Council England funded Creative People and Places programme, running since 2013, delivers work across Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, aiming to engage and involve more people in the arts
The theatre’s education department works with young people both in schools and through youth theatre, and has a growing strand of intergenerational work with older people, led by Jill Rezzano
The circus partnership programme with Upswing, which ranges from main house productions to participatory workshops to professional classes.

For this article, I spoke to Susan Moffat, the Director of the Borderlines programme since its inception in 1999, and to Gemma Thomas who led the Appetite programme from its creation in 2013 until the end of 2024.

Borderlines

Borderlines has won many awards in recognition of the deep impact it has on the lives of the people it works with. Independent research has shown that young offenders are much less likely to reoffend, racist behaviour in schools has reduced, and different sides in fractured communities have come together. They are trusted by local agencies – a great example is the time some community police officers visited the New Vic Box Office to explain that “Knutton’s bothering us” and could Borderlines come and work there?

Sue Moffat described their approach to the Knutton project as a good demonstration of their way of working:

“At the first meeting, we had parents of the kids being moaned about, youth workers, police, and people from the football team.

A broad group, but the young people were missing. So, we went out to do our own intelligence to get to know the space and the place and get a feel for it. We also engaged with local schools, youth clubs and the sheltered housing scheme so we could begin to gather stories from all directions.

Our practitioners went out during twilight, the crepuscular time when kids have finished school but have not yet been dragged in, so they are out and about – those shadowy times… we would go and just hang around and engage with young people hanging out. They will respond to us because we are from the theatre and not police, not knocking on windows and wagging fingers, just saying that we’re creating a piece of theatre about what it’s like living round here… we explain that theatre’s just like a film, but it happens in front of you – it’s about the stories, the dramas, the characters.

They started to engage, and when the weather got worse, we hung out in bus shelters and would ask if we could record conversations, explaining that the young people’s voices and ideas are important and that currently they are off the radar.”

A group of adults and children, many wearing orange safety vests, gathered outside a building entrance at night, some carrying lanterns and flags, with a young boy in the foreground looking at the camera.

Children setting out on the “Bringing Light to Dark Place” walk for Knutton project. Photo credit New Vic.

Nighttime shot of a lantern parade outside a club. Several illuminated paper lanterns shaped like towers and abstract figures are held by participants. One lantern prominently displays the word "FAITH" written vertically. The club sign, "KNUTTON F[RIENDS CLUB]" is lit up in the background. People, silhouetted against the light, are gathered around the lanterns.

Lanterns for the Knutton walk, based on factory chimneys locally known as Faith, Hope and Charity. Photo credit New Vic.

“We heard from the police that some kids were terrorising older people, jumping up on garages and into people’s back gardens.

We took a load of props out to work with the young people, e.g. walls as there’s always somebody’s wall you’re sitting on that you shouldn’t be, a bus stop and some other bits and pieces that kids had mentioned in conversations. We started to play a game called “Knutton’s Bothering Us” so the kids could animate it. One of the things we discovered was that the kids loved to go on missions – for example hedge hopping over people’s back gardens doing commando rolls and seeing how many they could get across. We acknowledged it sounded exciting, and then started to talk about grandparents – thinking about what if this happened to be in your gran’s garden, what would she feel? The kids decided to do something to build relationships. They created a big march in the winter with lanterns. The weather was shocking but the kids were determined to go ahead, marching from the British Legion Club through Morrisons car park.

They also created a play, riffing on the Viking connection with the K in Knutton to the K in King Knut (Canute) – thinking about what would you keep and what could be swept away with the tide.

Our projects are about the sense that the participants are driving their stories as opposed to life unfolding around them without any design. For the parents, seeing those kids being applauded as opposed to being shouted at is so powerful.”

Children on a stage in front of a costumed character with a large hand gesturing upwards, watching a performance, with adults in the background.

Performance of “Knutton’s Bothering Us” at the New Vic, showing the figure of King Knut. Photo credit New Vic.

There is a constant stream of work with young people and communities, and many other projects – from work on forced marriages that led to an accolade from Nazir Afzal, the Chief Crown Prosecutor – “Borderlines is saving lives” – to a research partnership with Keele University that includes “Creating Peace” – a trilogy of plays on the continuing impact of war from the World War Two Holocaust to Iraq to Bosnia.

A diverse group of people sit and stand in a circle around a small tree, some in chairs, others on the ground. A man in a black sweater gestures while speaking. Some people are holding cups or have objects on a wooden table.

A group of people performing a play, holding chairs, with props hanging from the ceiling and audience in the background.

Creating Peace performances. Photo credit Badger Badger Media.

Alongside this they have produced a toolkit with community and education workshops to address where those types of community fracturing come from and how do we begin right at the ground – Sue continued:

“It’s said that peace is something that happens between government and nations, but peace has to happen between people.

It’s a very fine line: a theatre space is a neutral space, we do not come in loaded, our practitioners don’t come in with our particular take on how the world should be, taking one side or another. I believe in agonistic* pluralism; you shouldn’t always even necessarily be looking for a compromise. But you should be looking at a way in which conflicting narratives can co-exist because in that little space in between; that’s where the exciting and cohesive work can happen.

Trying to force people in one direction or the other is not what our work is about, it’s about being able to listen. We are all humans and actually the thing that will put a smile on your face will most likely put a smile on that person’s face. You see in those moments that the otherness begins to dissipate and the common ground naturally beings to germinate. A lot of our work has been around poverty, around food poverty, around that kind of conflict that leads to racism, prejudice, discrimination in all kinds of forms.

It always has been part of the work because that’s what marginalises people, that’s where the idea of Borders comes in.”

Agonistic pluralism values ongoing debate rather than striving for complete consensus.

Appetite

Appetite aims to get more people to experience and be inspired by the arts. It is led by the New Vic, working with many partners – from statutory agencies to small grassroots community organisations. It was initially funded by Arts Council England (ACE) in 2013 through its Creative People and Places scheme for a three year programme in Stoke-on-Trent. With support from ACE and other funders continuing beyond the initial period, the programme expanded into Newcastle-under-Lyme in 2019, and last year, Appetite celebrated its tenth anniversary.

Gemma Thomas told me that she and Theresa Heskins, Artistic Director of the New Vic, came up with the title and themes of Appetite as they wanted to offer a taster menu in the first year. Gemma says they talked about the first time you try a food, rather like:

“all the times you experience arts and culture where it’s facilitated by your school or perhaps your granny has booked a panto ticket. You don’t know how to do it again until somebody helps you facilitate it”.

Much of the time their work happens outside and in community settings:

“otherwise people wouldn’t have come because they couldn’t see themselves being invited or because of the hard doors and boundaries that are off-putting for first time attenders.

We thought about how we help make that bridge over from what people think art is and who they think they are and where their community is, into something different, even if only for a moment.

Through Appetite we work in partnership with communities who form a strategic group and are the curators, commissioners and producers of work created by professional artists. It brings our streets, parks and shopping centres alive.

It was especially inspiring last summer to see art and culture bring together our communities on the streets of Hanley, when a mere three weeks before the threat of unrest had hovered over the same streets.”

A group of people, some in costume, perform outdoors near a modern building with a glass facade, all mirroring the same pose with arms outstretched and palms down. A man in a white tuxedo and bow tie is in the foreground, next to a woman in a blue gown, and another woman in a pink dress, with other people in casual clothing also participating.

The Big Feast 2024. Photo credit: Malcolm Hart.

Appetite produces an annual event The Big Feast, with events taking place across the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent in outdoor and underused spaces. They’ve delivered Newcastle Common, animating unused shops and other spaces in the town centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and created many magical large-scale events across the local area, from Kidsgrove to Etruria.

A man wearing a red hat and white t-shirt, smiling, holds a handle, with colorful ribbons stretched in front of people in the background.

The Big Feast 2024. Photo credit: Jenny Harper.

They also support people to develop their own ideas, often working over many years in this process. An example of this is Punjab to the Potteries, initiated by a local man, Val Bansal, who contacted Gemma in 2016. He had a wallet full of family photographs and memorabilia and he could see projects elsewhere in the UK commemorating the South Asian experience, but nothing in Stoke. He was concerned that the history of people coming from the Punjab to North Staffordshire was going to be lost. Over time this evolved firstly into a photographic project Settling, with artist Sam Iving, about new people coming to live in the Potteries, whether they came from other parts of the world or from different parts of the UK. Subsequently they commissioned two playwrights, Shahid Iqbal Khan and Sarah Bedi, to write short plays interviewing 31 people from the local South Asian community, resulting in a photography exhibition and a play reading. In 2024 the people involved created a festival called Sensasian, with evening events and a family day.

Group of diverse women dancing with arms raised, in a dimly lit performance space, one woman in the foreground smiling and wearing a red top.

SenAsian performance. Photo credit: Malcolm Hart.

A theatre embedded in its community

There is so much more to tell about how the New Vic engages with its communities, but no space here to do justice to it all. I would just urge you to go to Newcastle-under-Lyme, catch one of the New Vic’s own productions and enjoy this warm, welcoming and properly unique theatre for yourself. It’s a beautiful example of a producing theatre with an unwavering commitment to engaging with its communities, telling the stories of its local area, creating brilliant work, and making sure that all the resources of a major cultural venue are poured into helping to make the world a better place.

THE NEW VIC – A THEATRE EMBEDDED IN ITS COMMUNITY

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