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What's Happening
Beauty for Ashes Refuges
Dear God...
“Hardly anyone can ever find God because God is right at the end of your mind after all the background thoughts are gone.”
Maisie Satchwell-Hust
 

Riding Lights Theatre Company

Fizzy Finn Finds His Feet


A Christmas Adventure for Key Stages 1 & 2 supporting schools coming out of lockdown.
 
‘Shoes are very good story tellers.

You experience a lot by stepping into someone else’s shoes.

So fasten your laces!

Tie them up tight because you’re in for a treat!’

 


Riding Lights Theatre Company

Riding Lights Theatre Company is one of the UK’s most productive and long-established independent theatre companies. Founded in York 45 years ago, partly through the initiative of a city-centre church, the company continues to take innovative, accessible theatre into all kinds of communities far and wide. Our aim is to create unforgettable, entertaining theatre in response to current issues and the hopes and fears of the world we share. While the company’s roots are in a christian ethos, our work is open to everyone, using faith as a springboard to explore all aspects of life.
 


The Show
 
Many young children have found recent lockdowns and absences from friends and family very stressful, causing anxieties they find hard to articulate.

Riding Lights Theatre Company has created this wonderfully insightful Christmas show to address some of these problems in a gentle, fun way. 
We wanted to support teachers in this arena by providing helpful teaching resources that they could use with children who see the live show or the film download.

Through the character of Finn and his discovery of Tink the cobbler and her amazing story-telling Shoe Shop, we jump right into tales of bravery, fear and finding your feet in the world.

Finn is a fidget. His brain is ablaze with an unbreakable buzz that fizzes to his fingers and tickles his toes...or it would do if he could only find his feet.

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 ‘I can feel it.

Electricity ripples like thunder in my chest and lightning in my brain. I can’t escape.

It’s after me and if you don’t get out the way it’ll zap you too!

Exploring the big things troubling young minds today, Finn embarks on a crackling Christmas Eve adventure, with a magical blend of vivid storytelling, original music and creative puppetry.


Teaching resources

The play comes with a free teachers’ pack with follow-up learning activities for Key Stages 1 & 2, fully sponsored by the Westhill Foundation.

Riding Lights School primary school shows are always accompanied by teaching materials. The writer in this instance is a London based primary school teacher with a background in psychotherapy. Printed versions will be available on request.
 


 
 
 
 

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Want to see the play? Or the film? 

The play will be toured to primary schools in North Yorkshire between 22nd Nov 22 and 17th Dec 2021. From 18th December it will be available for families to book into a performance at Friargate Theatre, home of Riding Lights in York, until 23rd Dec 2021.

Fizzy Finn Finds His Feet will also be filmed In order to make the work as widely available as possible. It will be available as a download from the Riding Lights website, for schools and communities further than a day’s travel from York. Every primary school in the UK will be contacted and invited to book the film download which comes with the free teaching materials. The film will be released from Monday November 22, the same day that the local tour begins in Yorkshire.


Why are a Theatre Comapny using film?

Unable to tour last year because of the pandemic, Riding Lights decided to branch into film. A national funding charity provided the finance to secure training and kit to make films for prisons. Using the same kit and developing skills the next film projects was a Christmas show for primary schools, Jon Boustead’s adaptation of The Selfish Giant  by Oscar Wilde. Available as a download, the film reached a huge audience across the UK and thousands more children were able to enjoy the show beyond the four thousand or so who would normally get to see a live show. The film was very warmly received and that response was a key ingredient in the decision to film Fizzy Finn Finds His Feet in the hope that it may reach a similarly large audience.

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Credits: Fizzy Finn FInds his feet is written by Jon Boustead, directed by Erin Burbridge and designed by Anna Gooch. Photography by Tom Jackson. 
 


For more information:
https://ridinglights.org/fizzy-finn/