Five playwrights are about to put the North-East on stage using the Royal Shakespeare Company Ensemble. Viv Hardwick reports.

FIVE emerging playwrights will start racing around Newcastle from Monday in a breathtaking two-week effort to explore, interrogate and soak up everything they find to create five short new plays.

The project, called Tyneside Stories, is a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company’s associate director Roxana Silbert and head of movement Struan Leslie and Live Theatre’s artistic director Max Roberts and literary manager Gez Casey.

Taking their inspiration from the city, the writers will spend the first few days exploring Newcastle, meeting residents, traversing the Tyne as well as taking a trip into the cities fascinating past before creating five new pieces of work. The short plays will then be performed as scriptin- hand readings at two exclusive events on Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7.

Gez Casey explains: “This unique project will see some of the country’s best new playwrights visiting Newcastle to examine how people within a city move and breathe? How the history of a place impacts on a stranger? And how you see your own city in a new light?

The end result will be a great night of new work sharing contrasting views of our city.”

The playwrights taking part in Tyneside Stories are: Dick Curran, Roz Wyllie, Sam Holcroft, Ali Muriel and Laura Neal who will have their plays performed by an extraordinary company of actors including Charles Aitken, Geoff Freshwater, Ansu Kabia, Sandy Neilson, Peter Shorey, Clarence Smith, Katy Stephens and James Howard from the RSC ensemble alongside some of the North East’s finest actors.

■ Tickets for Tyneside Stories are now available for sale. To book contact Live Theatre’s box office on 0191- 232-1232 or book online by visiting live.org.uk

■ Anyone from the age of 16 who would like to learn the tricks and idioms of Shakespeare language from an RSC ensemble member and a performance poet can book for a workshop at Newcastle Theatre Royal on Saturday at 10.30am.

The workshop costs £7.50 and can be booked through The Wunderbar Festival Box Office, Dance City, Temple Street, Newcastle, NE1 4BR or phone 0191-261-0505.

The Wunderbar Festival is a new biennial event of contemporary performances, visual art and happenings which is running November 6-15 in Newcastle and Gateshead and other North-East venues.

Wunderbarfestival.co.uk n During the RSC Newcastle Residency, which runs until November 7, people at Metro Stations, The Tyneside Cinema, The Theatre Royal and Northern Stage will hear public announcements in Shakespearean-style language.

North-East RSC ensemble members Peter Peverley and Paul Hamilton have made recordings along with former RSC company member Chuk Iwuji and triple If. Comedy award nomineee Russell Kane.

Anyone with an idea for an announcement can take part in the open call competition on http://bit.ly/pOgOF

■ The RSC Newcastle season, sees four Shakespeare plays – As You Like It (running this week), The Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar and a young people’s version of The Comedy Of Errors – touring to the city’s Theatre Royal plus the world premiere of A Tender Thing by Ben Power, a look at Romeo And Juliet as older lovers, and a new version of Roy Williams’ Days of Significance (running this week) playing Northern Stage.

Newcastle Theatre Royal: 08448-112-121 theatreroyal.co.uk Northern Stage: 0191-230-5151 northernstage.co.uk