YORK Shakespeare Project will take part in the York International Shakespeare Festival with a series of Sonnet Walks, beginning ahead of next week's festival tomorrow evening.

The one-hour walks will set out from York Theatre Royal at 6pm and 6.15pm, tomorrow until next Saturday, except Sunday, and at 12 noon and 12.15pm next Saturday, one led by by YSP stalwart Helen Wilson, the other by acting chairman Ian Timmins, with 11 sonneteers taking part. Namely, Mick Taylor; Bill Laverick; Marguerite Moss; Victoria Delaney; Sophie Walmsley; Beth Stevens; Shirley Williams; Di Starr; Diana Wyatt; Hamish Forsyth and Terry Ram.

YSP first staged Sonnet Walks under the direction of Helen Wilson and Tom Straszewski in the run-up to Le Grand Depart from York for the 2014 Tour de France. Now the walks return, this time directed by Helen Wilson once more, along with former YSP chairman Maurice Crichton.

"We were involved in the first York International Shakespeare Festival, performing Timon Of Athens, and after a hiatus, the organisers said they'd like to do the festival again and we'd like you to be involved again," says Maurice. "We thought our 2017 production of Henry VIII might be a bit unpalatable with everything else that was going on in the festival, so we decided, 'let's do some sonnets, and do them in the early evening so that festival-goers can come along at six and see something else at 7.30pm'."

A further reason for mounting the Sonnet Walks prevails, beyond the importance of the long-running York Shakespeare Project having a presence at the Shakespeare Festival. "It's a chance for people to perform something with us without a big commitment: just 14-line sonnets, which is a good way to build up your confidence as a performer, and we have lots of new people taking part," says Helen.

"Performing outdoors, you have to deliver your sonnet close up to the eyeballs of your audience," says Maurice. "There's no warm-up; you're straight in, you do your thing and you're off. Over the week, you have to do that 18 times, so I think a lot of performers will gain from a crash course from performing so directly to an audience, which is much more what Shakespeare was all about than how modern dramas are now done."

Helen rejoins: "There are people who are 'scared of Shakespeare', but these sonnet walks bring Shakespeare back to being for everyone with nothing esoteric about it, as Shakespeare needs to be brought back to the people, rather than being kept in the ivory tower of academia."

Each walk's audience will be restricted to 16 and the minimum age is 14. Tickets can be booked on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk