FINE Chisel's "adventurous theatrical event, bursting with live music", has taken over four Yorkshire towns this month.

Already the Bristol theatre company and roistering folk band have spread their Icarus wings in Pocklington, Selby and Easingwold, and on Saturday and Sunday they will rally the community in Helmsley.

Each performance starts out in a church, breaks out into the streets and ends with a wake of songs and contemplation in a pub: three places that are suited to theatrical and musical expression as much as a theatre.

And that's the point of York Theatre Royal's On Our Turf project, run by Alexander Wright, theatre-maker and co-founder of The Little Festival of Everything. The project began by taking everything – theatre, children's storytelling, comedy, music etc – to the four towns last autumn and continues by involving the community in creating a show in each town over the next two years.

If theatres are to thrive and prosper in the years ahead, they can't just expect people to keep turning up at the mother theatres; instead they must engage with communities on their home turf, encouraging them to participate as much as watch.

Fine Chisel drew initial inspiration from The Flying Man of Pocklington, a story of ambition that ended in tragic failure, and then settled on re-telling another fateful story, Icarus's rise and fall, but the lesson of both is our need to respond to big dreams, never to fear failure, especially if that means being "a little reckless".

Theatre-makers have to do that do, and how fantastic it was to see that half of Tuesday's performers at Easingwold had taken up the invitation to join Fine Chisel's Tom Spencer, George Williams and Holly Beasley-Garrigan and their Pocklington core of community singers, musicians and actors for that day's preparations from 10am onwards for the 7.30pm show.

On Our Turf''s role as a Pied Piper is another affirmation of York Theatre Royal's all-embracing theatrical vision that theatre should be about the people, by the people, for the people, and not only of York but the Yorkshire beyond.

Icarus may have flown too close to the sun, as ever, but his flight of fancy in 20ft wings has set in motion fantastic possibilities for the plays that lie ahead in Selby, Easingwold and Helmsley in 2014 an d 2015.

"We raise a glass to those who have fallen but also to those who are still trying to fly," said Fine Chisel's Tom Spencer. Where better for them to fly than in the world of theatre, always a place for chasing dreams?

Icarus, Fine Chisel, On Our Turf at All Saints Church, Helmsley, Saturday and Sunday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk