Welcome to YEP Spotlight, a place to catch up with our Young Everyman Playhouse students and alumni and share what they are up to.

Ahead of its stage debut, we caught up with the team behind Femme. Our YEP Producers have worked collaboratively with local writers and performers to create this genre and gender-bending take on some of classical literature's scorned heroines. This year’s Producers cohort consists of Eve Mobey, Lucy Demba, Erin Cluskey, Madeline Cole and Eve Marie Sumner, who will also be joining forces with the other YEP strands across the organisation ahead of the highly anticipated YEP Director’s Festival.

Hi All! Could you tell us a little about where the concept for Femme originated from?

For the initial creative stages there were a lot of opportunities for discussion and debate, and we came to the mutual agreement that we wanted to produce something that would resonate with different audiences. It was our mission for audiences to leave the theatre either feeling like they had learnt something new, or that they felt represented on stage. From this, we decided to explore the different forms of femininity present in society, as it’s something everybody experiences and interacts with to different degrees. Femininity is so often perceived as a weakness, so it was this contradiction between the traditional celebration of masculinity, and rejection of femininity that became the catalyst for Femme.

How has YEP shaped your creative practice?

Being part of the YEP Producers Programme has given us the necessary and vital tools to work collaboratively, and it has demonstrated the many positives of working with lots of different minds and new stories. We have all been able to benefit from professional guidance and experience that we’re able to take forward with us into the YEP Director’s Festival, and wider creative ventures. It’s no secret that theatre is one of the toughest industries to break into, but YEP has provided us all the opportunity to get our foot in the door.

What has been the biggest challenge producing Femme? How have you overcome it?

One of the biggest challenges we faced from the offset was managing the logistics of creating a new show from scratch. Our weekly sessions have had to be balanced with education, work and personal commitments, whilst also liaising with local creatives to develop Femme’s script. It has also been a learning curve in understanding how to respectfully manage people, and work in the most professional way possible. WhatsApp has been our saving grace in terms of communicating outside of our production meetings (you would be surprised how much you can do over a WhatsApp group chat).

Are you working on anything else we should know about?

Yes! Four members of the cohort, (Lucy, Eve M, Erin and Mads) are in the early stages of producing another play each, working with the talented YEP Director’s ahead of YEP Director’s Festival, whilst Eve S will be supporting the production of the project as a whole. Keep your eyes peeled for Small Hours, Shook, Every Brilliant Thing, and The Arsonists, coming to the Everyman in July.

Femme will be performed in EV1, Everyman Theatre Fri 20 May to Sat 21 May.

Tickets £5.