Tempting Fate Theatre Co.
We are a Yorkshire based new writing company creating emotionally engaging, though provoking work on subjects that you wouldn’t think you could laugh about. We like to look gripping stories with dark subject matter that will enthral and move an audience while giving their funny bone a good tickle, whether they feel it is appropriate or not.
The name Tempting Fate comes from our fascination with human behaviour, particularly in tragic circumstances. As a company we tend to find ourselves looking at misfortune and tragedy, whether it is a topic as broad and encompassing as the War on Terror or as small and personal as a minor car accident. But what really interests us is the often hilarious reactions people tend to have to these things, and the unexpected comedy often thrown up by misfortune. You have to allow yourself to laugh sometimes, even if just to relieve the tension, but I suppose this can only last for so long without tempting fate.
A B O U T US
Ruby Clarke is the current Artistic Director of York Theatre Royal’s TakeOver Festival, taking place throughout 2013. For more information about the festival go to http://www.takeoverfestival.co.uk/
In this role she directed Neil LaBute’s The Mercy Seat in June this year in the York Theatre Royal Studio. She has also worked with York Theatre Royal as Assistant Director on Guinea Pig Club and Assistant Associate Director on the York Mystery Plays 2012, as well as directing The Creation and Fields of Gold as part of the ‘Modern Mysteries’ fringe event.
Before completing her MA in Writing, Directing and Performance at the University of York in 2011, directing David Harrower’s Blackbird, she worked as a youth theatre practitioner at Lancaster Dukes Theatre (DT3) assisting on It Snows by Briony Lavery (2010) and Kevin Dyer’s Baghdad Zoo (2010). Taking Directing as her focus in her final year of undergraduate study in Lancaster she adapted and directed Alice in Wonderland as well as putting on John Kolvenbach’s Lovesong in 2009.
She directed Tempting Fate’s first performance, Quicksand, marking the ten year anniversary of the Gulf war in March 2013, written by local writer and ex serviceman Matthew Midgley.