Riding Lights is a British independent theatre company which has toured shows nationally and internationally since 1977. Based at Friargate Theatre, York since 2000, the company has staged numerous original productions such as "Science Friction" and "Dick Turpin", that have toured nationally. Other recent tours have included Mistero Buffo (2005), The Winter's Tale (2006) and a co-production with York Theatre Royal, African Snow played at York and the Trafalgar Studios in London before touring across the country. The play was a contribution to the national commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the UK and took as its theme the stories of John Newton and Olaudah Equiano. In 2007 they toured a play looking at the Christian community of contemporary Bethlehem called Salaam Bethlehem. In 2008 they revived their production of Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat as a co-production with York Theatre Royal.
The company has a thriving Youth Theatre which has performed many well-received productions, including Headstrong and The Miracle as part of the BT Shell Connections National Theatre Competition, Free For All (a devised production) and a modern production of Julius Caesar.
Riding Lights are one of the co-producers of the historic York Mystery Plays which will be staged in York Museum Gardens between 2-27 August 2012. The Plays are directed by Paul Burbridge, Artistic Director of Riding Lights and Damian Cruden, Artistic Director of York Theatre Royal.
Famous quotes containing the words riding, lights, theatre and/or company:
“Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime
Put on his pistols and went riding out
But had got wellnigh nowhere at that time
Till he fell in with ladies in a rout.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Johann Strauss—Forty couples dancing ... one by one they slip from the hall ... sounds of kisses ... the lights go out”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts and grapes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)