YORK Theatre Royal's special relationship with Castleford company Pilot is stronger still under the new Stage Exchange partnership.

Pilot Theatre Company's three-year residency begins with a co-production of Jim Cartwright's Road, a play that appropriately will be heading out on the road for a six-month, 18-venue tour after its September 13 to 28 run in York.

Pilot's ever adventurous director Marcus Romer has commissioned a newly updated script from Cartwright to go with an original soundtrack, DVD projection and live surveillance cameras as the company seeks to push back the boundaries of multi-media theatre.

Pilot already have conceived, rehearsed and premiered productions of Lord Of The Flies and Rumble Fish at the Theatre Royal and now they refresh Cartwright's story of lost souls, repressed dreams and desires to escape as a slightly intoxicated character by the name of Scullery guides the audience through a nocturnal tour of an everyday road.

"What we're doing by using technology for each show is saying this Road is your road rather than some far-off Coronation Street road, and the way we're doing that is with our own Big Brother-style TV docu-soap presentation. The CCTV cameras will be all around you, so the show will spill out into the foyer, and that's because stories are happening on the corner from where you live."

Multi-media has become all the rage in theatre, yet it can be a distracting rather than beneficial tool. Pilot, however, have developed a house style that successfully marries content with style.

"Hopefully people acknowledge that we work in a certain way with our use of sound and technology that is bold and doesn't shy away from things but also tells the story well. We incorporate technology with strong performances and a strong soundtrack to give our shows a filmic quality," Marcus says.

"That makes the work interesting but if people notice the sound and light changes then they're noting the wrong things. We want them to notice the story, the dialogue, the characters, and if the technology can add another layer to the story, then it's doing its job.

"It's about the right image going with the right story in the right direction, rather than it being abstract."

Road, York Theatre Royal, September 13-28. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:14 Friday, September 06, 2002