‘we were promised honey!’ tour 2023: a page to accompany our Project Grant Application
we were promised honey!
‘we were promised honey!’ premiered at Paines Plough’s Roundabout @ Summerhall in August 2022. There it received massive critical-acclaim and huge interest from programmers and producers looking to book the show for tour. The show then ran at Soho Theatre in London November 22nd to December 3rd where it has been shortlisted for Best Production of 2023 in the OffWestEnd Awards.
As part of the Spring Tour 2023 we will be bringing ‘we were promised honey!’ and our workshops for young people to the following venues:
Nonsuch Studios, Nottingham - 25th May
Pound Arts, Corsham - 26th May
Phoenix, Exeter - 28th May
The Drum, Plymouth - 31st May to 3rd June (with workshops)
HOME, Manchester - 7th to 10th June (with workshops)
Unity Theatre, Liverpool - 17th June
Theatre by the Lake, Keswick - 22nd to 24th June (with workshops)
Brixton House, London - 3rd to 4th November (with workshops)
Proteus Theatre, Basingstoke - 7th November
The Spring, Havant - 8th November
FEAST Festival, Malvern - 9th November
The Brewhouse, Taunton - 10th November
Sequel Show
Whilst touring ‘we were promised honey!’ we will R&D a new sequel show. Continuing the form of experimental storytelling, we are interested in exploring the concept of ideology, the way it constructs every fibre of our being. Inspired by true-life texts such as Svetlana Alexeveich’s ‘Second-Hand Time’ we are interested in multiple storytellers onstage, telling a polyphonic story of different characters attempting to escape and maintain relationships across different ideologies and different identities.
Young Dramaturgs
As part of the development of ‘we were promised honey!’ in May/June 2022, YESYESNONO launched a pilot for a new development scheme entitled ‘Young Dramaturgs’. Funded by Arts Council England, we recruited 8 young people from across the country to undertake workshops in dramaturgy over three weekends. Our Young Dramaturgs learnt about structure, form and character and were regular participants in sharings of ‘we were promised honey!’, offering feedback and developing their skills as dramaturgs. Following feedback from these Young Dramaturgs we are rolling out single-unit versions of these workshops to various touring-partners over the Spring 2023 tour. Building on what we learn from that roll-out, the ambition is to launch a full version of the scheme later in 2023, in which we will work with a group of 10 young people on a full ‘Young Dramaturgs’ development scheme.
Open Rehearsal
For the past three years we have run an ‘Open Rehearsal’ scheme. As part of this scheme we invite local, emerging artists in the R&D or rehearsal for our current project, inviting them to observe our process and ask questions. In 2022 we expanded the scheme such that all attendees also received one hour of free mentoring from either Sam or Rhian. We are running the scheme along the development of the new sequel-show across Spring 2023.
