As the clock struck midnight in Brussels on December 31, the UK s Brexit transition period for leaving the EU ended and with it the country s membership of the decades-old Erasmus programme.
As many as three million people have passed through the scheme since it started in 1987, which offers university students in the European Union the opportunity to study in another country.
The programme also has some famous alumni, including former EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, a host of European politicians and Tom Bird, former executive producer at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.
Now the executive director at York Theatre Royal, Bird told Euronews the career milestones he has accomplished are inspired by the spirit of adventure Erasmus gave me .
York s travelling panto has been called off for this week following the recent rise in the city s coronavirus rate YORK Theatre Royal has decided not to stage any more of its successful Travelling Pantomimes, following the recent rise in coronavirus cases in the city. The show went earlier this month to Tang Hall, Dunnington, Wigginton, Holgate, Clifton Moor, Elvington, Poppleton, Acomb, Carr Lane, Strensall, Copmanthorpe, Fulford, Heworth and Guildhall, and several post-Christmas performances had been planned for this week. But executive director Tom Bird said that with great regret, the theatre had decided that the pantomime would not resume for its post-Christmas performances.
The theatre will have socially-distanced audiences, with its usual capacity of 750 reduced to 345. A spokesman said the theatre had been granted the use of Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre’s See It Safely mark. The mark certifies the theatre is complying with the latest government and industry COVID-19 guidelines, to ensure the safety of staff and audiences, he said. He said the opening performance on February 14 would be a special event which was still to be finalised. That will be followed by The Love Season until April 21, led by the debut tour of award-winning Coronation Street and Broadchurch actor Julie Hesmondhalgh’s one-woman sellout play The Greatest Play in the History of the World from February 16-20, he said.
REVIEW: York Theatre Royal’s Travelling Pantomime, Jack And The Beanstalk, New Earswick Folk Hall, York (Saturday, December 5) NO Rolling Stones show goes by without rock’n’roll’s greatest paleontological survivor, Keith Richards, leaning into his microphone to mumble: “It’s good to be here…it’s good to be anywhere”. Lo and behold, “It’s great to be here…it’s kind of great to be anywhere,” says York Theatre Royal Travelling Pantomime’s comic turn, Josh “Just Joshing” Benson, at the outset of Saturday evening’s Covid-secure, socially distanced, temperature-tested, bubble-seated pantomime. How right he is. Saturday was day four of the new dawn of the York Theatre Royal pantomime, the first after 40 years in the wildness of the Dame Berwick Kaler era. Until Covid-19 became the joyless new villain, out to destroy the land of theatre, Cinderella was to have marked the transition from Kaler capers to a new partnership with regular Great Britis