As York Theatre Royal is taken over by young people, Charles Hutchinson looks at what will be on offer.

TAKEOVER09 is the three-week festival “by young people, with young people, for everyone”, as York Theatre Royal’s mantra indicates.

The festival board is keen to emphasise the all-embracing nature of an event where the theatre will be run by a team whose members are no older in age than 26 – and the first two participating companies, Forward Theatre Project and The Factory, are wholly in tune with the festival philosophy. Young people make the work for sure, but it will appeal to a broader audience.

Festival co-artistic director Charlotte Bennett commissioned the Studio production of A Five-Star Werewolf from Skins writer Gabriel Bisset-Smith. She will be directing Forward Theatre Project’s production of a story where horror and comedy collide when a man called Ford claims to have been attacked by a werewolf staying in the hotel room next door.

Charlotte and Gabriel met when she assisted on his play Graceland in the 24-Hour Play programme at the Old Vic in London. Later, Gabriel set about writing a new work, A Five-Star Werewolf, with six months of development in London, followed by more work in York and a public reading by the Death Of A Salesman cast last November.

“We did only half a play but it left them gasping for more... hopefully!” says Charlotte. “So there was already a possibility of doing it as a co-production in the Studio season in 2010, and then along came this event and when I was offered the artistic directorship. Damian Cruden [the theatre’s artistic director] said it would be worth considering Werewolf for the programme.”

Gareth is thrilled that his first full-length stage show will receive such prominent exposure. “It’s a really exciting opportunity for me,” he says. “I can’t wait to see what people think of it, as it’s quite an out-there play: pretty out there but funny. I don’t want to say strange. There’s a lot of darkness.

“I was going to call it A Two-Star Werewolf, but that doesn’t sound very good. Call it Five-Star and you get their hopes up as they’re coming in.”

Describing a play with the theme of sibling burdens and family relationships, Charlotte says: “It’s very much about real people in real situations, albeit bizarre ones… but truthful.

“It’s important to have a festival like this where new voices and new thoughts come through, otherwise theatre would always remain the same.”

Theatre never remains the same in the hands of the London company The Factory, which refreshes Hamlet by changing the cast from a squad of actors for each performance and calling on the audience to provide the props.

Likewise, The Seagull Project will not use a specific translation of Chekhov’s play but utilise all of them as the cast improvises a script on the hoof as they speak each performance. Now that is risk-taking theatre for audience and young performers alike. How can you resist these ad-hoc performances in the main house?

• A Five-Star Werewolf will run from tomorrow until October 3 in The Studio; Hamlet will be performed from Tuesday to Saturday; The Seagull Project on Thursday and next Saturday, in the main house.