Kittiwakes stick around to star in Quayside Christmas show
Live Theatre's inspiration from above
Where do all the Kittiwakes go at Christmas? It’s the question being asked at Live Theatre and also the longest title of any show being staged in the region this festive season.
He’d wanted to call it The Seagull, says Live’s artistic director, Jack McNamara, but attributed not to Anton Chekhov (whose famous play of that name premiered in 1896) but instead to one Feathers McFlap.
“I thought it was funny but chatting to people here I was reminded how much kittiwakes are part of the landscape and all our kids’ shows have been connected to the North East.
“The play became about kittiwakes but I didn’t think ‘kittiwake’ had quite the same pull as ‘seagull’. It’s a slightly more awkward word, so I decided the whole title had to be a bit awkward.
“I like either really short titles or long and cumbersome ones.”
Actually, it was touch and go whether Live Theatre would have a family show this Christmas.
Funding from The Gillian Dickinson Trust had sustained three seasons of Wintry Tales, inspired by the ideas of young schoolchildren and directed by Becky Morris, of Live’s Children and Young People team.
That money having being spent, Jack considered giving this year a miss.
“But then I thought that would be a shame because our audiences have been growing. It seemed wrong to suddenly give them nothing.”
Jack decided to write a show himself – aided, he stresses, by Becky and colleague Helen Green.
This he had done elsewhere in previous roles, successfully adapting books such as The Giant Jam Sandwich and The Wolf, The Duck and The Mouse for the stage.
“I just have it as a muscle that I haven’t used for a while but it’s actually great fun doing a kids’ show because you’ve got to make it really lively and you’ve got to be on your game.
“It’s about how am I going to make every minute worth watching for a range of age groups?
“The kids’ theatre we do is not panto. It’s always got substance so we have moments here concerning environmentalism.
“There’s a scene where the older kittiwake is swimming in the ocean and the Jaws soundtrack comes on. He says, ‘What’s that thing approaching?’
“It ends up being a plastic bag and we find out how they’re the biggest maritime killers. But we do it tongue-in-cheek. We don’t want to lecture kids but we do want to make them think.”
I can vouch for the fun side of the show, having just watched the two actors energetically rehearsing a scene with Jack and movement specialist Alicia Meehan (with props by Amy Watts).
They’re Malcolm Shields, a Scot who has lived on Tyneside for 11 years, and Shannon McLean who was born in Newcastle but now lives in Falkirk where she performs and also runs a theatre school.
Having crossed the border in opposite directions they’re now roosting at Live Theatre, on Newcastle Quayside, playing kittiwakes.
Jack hoped Malcolm would take the part, having worked with him on Live’s tough prison drama, One Off.
Malcolm says he loved the script when he first read it. “It’s really witty. It’s got a good theme and engages the kids, I think.
“I’m Grandfather Kittiwake and every year, when the other kittiwakes migrate, I stay here with my granddaughter because we’ve found a little attic place.
“It’s the granddaughter who’s happiest staying. But one year Grandad Kittiwake goes, ‘I’m getting on. This might be my last Christmas.’ He wants to see where other kittiwakes might go so he takes off on this big adventure.
“Shannon then, fantastically, plays all the characters he meets on his travels.”
Shannon lists them: “A turkey vulture from America, an Australian lyrebird, an alien from Yorkshire and a plastic bag.” And, of course, a kittiwake.
Jack says actors like a challenge – and he liked Shannon, surprised when she auditioned that here was an actor from the North East he didn’t know.
This isn’t terribly surprising. Shannon grew up in North Tyneside and went to school there - Star of the Sea primary followed by St Thomas More - before moving to Singapore for two years.
On her return she went to Sacred Heart, in Fenham, before heading north, settling in Falkirk where she opened her Stand-out Theatre School two-and-a-half years ago.
She says she used to tell her family she wanted to be a solicitor – “I thought it sounded better” – but really wanted to act.
Having got into musical theatre, she appeared in panto in Glasgow two years running, The Wizard of Oz at the Tron Theatre and then Cinderella at the Websters Theatre. “That was fun,” she says.
She was due to make her Live Theatre debut in 2020 but Covid meant it didn’t happen. She’d had open heart surgery the previous year and then four years ago gave birth to her son, Jaden.
“After that, I thought I’d open my own theatre school because why not?
“It was maybe a plan for the future but I just brought it forward. It started in a tiny unit and I had seven kids. But it’s expanded. Now we’ve got three studios, eight members of staff and 170 kids.”
She even writes pantos for them to perform.
Clearly Shannon has a portfolio of demanding roles but, at 27, she says she’s determined to make it work – and she’s thrilled to be appearing at Live Theatre at last.
As well as having almost certainly the longest title in the region, this must be the only show in the world dedicated to the slender-billed curlew.
In the play, Grandad Kittiwake goes seeking other kittiwakes and in every new country he meets what Jack describes as “another slightly overlooked bird” – so in Australia a lyrebird rather than a kookaburra, in America a turkey vulture rather than an eagle.
“Thinking which bird to have on a remote island I was going to have the dodo but then I thought it gets all the press as an extinct bird,” he explains.
“I’d read an article saying the slender-billed curlew was recently declared extinct (last November, in fact, the final confirmed sighting having been in Morocco in 1995) and thought that spoke more clearly of present environmental devastation.
“Even if it’s not iconically recognisable like the dodo, it shows how we’re losing birds and wildlife today.”
The kittiwakes, considered vulnerable as a species worldwide, will be back here – from wherever it is they go - in the spring, delighting many, agitating others and perhaps splattering a few unlucky people down below.
Before then, though, there’s this festive homage at the heart of their Tyneside territory.
Where Do All The Kittiwakes Go At Christmas? opens on Tuesday, December 9 and runs until Sunday, December 21 in Live Theatre’s upstairs theatre space – with no danger of getting splattered from on high!
It’s suitable for ages five and upwards and tickets can be bought from the box office – tel. 0191 2321232 – or online via the Live Theatre website.