Guest Blog: Vicki Baron Talks A YEAR FROM NOW at VAULT Festival

Directing A Year From Now has been a giddying challenge from a coffee-fuelled start to an adrenaline-rush finish. On a sunny morning many months ago, I sat down with producer and Artistic Director of RedBellyBlack, Kate Goodfellow, to discuss our next project. We had just about recovered from the physical and mental exertions of the Edinburgh Fringe, and we wanted to get stuck into something new.

The best-laid plans of mice and men pretty often go off-piste. Although we had planned to be strictly professional we found ourselves discussing Kate's cousin's wedding, which had taken place the previous weekend. It transpired that she had met someone special there, and that apart from his personal charms he had also won Kate's attention by other means: his life story.

What he had been through was truly unique, and as a result he viewed time in a completely different way from our own perspectives. I won't spoil it for you, because it's in the show, but it was genuinely mind-blowing.

The man Kate met at that wedding had been through some unbelievable things, and as we discussed it Kate and I realised that our lives were filled with people who had their own amazing stories to tell. We wanted to know how they felt about time, too. If you stop and think about it, everyone you know has an incredible life story and nobody views time in the exact same way as you do. One person's hour is another person's decade.

We reached out to some actors who we knew would share our fascination. Together, the six of us began to approach the people in our lives who inspired us, who made us reconsider about our own attitudes toward time. We asked them some simple questions and got some astonishing answers: "What's your favourite time of day?", "What do you make time for?" and "Where do you see yourself a year from now?".

We interviewed nonagenarians who were still driving. We interviewed trauma survivors who literally laughed in the face of their adversity. I went to Scotland to interview my friend's four-year-old son, who was far more interested in building a race track for his toy cars than he was in the interview. This is understandable, of course. A year from now he sees himself becoming a famous racing car driver, and who am I to distract him from his life goals?

In all seriousness, the people we interviewed were incredible. Most of the interviews were conducted in April or May 2016, and when we first performed the show in July 2016 we were delirious with excitement about telling the stories we had collected.

Six months later, it is a testament to how brilliant our participants were that their answers still reduce us to tears, giggling fits and/or hiccups in the rehearsal room. We fell in love with their stories, and when you love a story you want to experience it again and again.

Which is how we ended up pitching A Year From Now to VAULT Festival. We knew that the interviews we had conducted had brought to light some very moving, honest and thought-provoking stories, and we wanted to tell them again. We wanted to share what we had found with as many people as possible, and VAULT Festival is an unparalleled opportunity to do that.

What A Year From Now does is remind us that just because we all experience time differently doesn't mean that we are alone. The people in our show were generous enough to be completely honest with us about their perspectives of time, and their honesty has the power to start important conversations.

How do you feel about time? Where do you see yourself a year from now? No idea? Me neither. But if you come down to the Vaults at the end of January, we can have a really good chat about it.

A Year From Now at VAULT Festival 25-29 January

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!