Two new commissions announced for the 23/24 Playhouse project!
Playhouse is committed to working with writers to commission new plays for 8-11yr olds to perform and after a post-covid break we are delighted to be commissioning once again.
For the 2023/24 Playhouse project we are excited to announce that we have commissioned Lydia Marchant and Gary Owen to each write their own brand new play.
York Theatre Royal are the lead partner working with Lydia Marchant, whom we commissioned after an open call for female-identifying Yorkshire based writers. The reason for the call-out criteria was to address the imbalance of male and female writers commissioned by the project but also to provide an opportunity for a writer from our region to showcase their talent.
As part of the process we visited four classes across two schools, to help guide Lydia’s ideas and provide thoughts, opinions and experiences from those for whom the play would be written. Lydia’s seed of an idea was around gaming. Through practical exercises we explored what games children played, how they saw the future of technology and who they considered to their heroes and villains, both in a real and virtual world. From here Lydia has written a Treatment (broad story outline) and it is great to see how her ideas have been informed and guided by the children, so much so that one child’s persistent desire for a ‘Taco eating Panda’ to be in, has been included! Next stage is a two month writing period, so we look forward to first draft in mid-November.
Theatr Iolo are the lead partner working with award-winning Welsh playwright Gary Owen, who will be writing his play in Welsh, which will then be translated into English. Gary Owen’s new play will be an age–appropriate take on Shakespeare’s King Lear exploring friendship and featuring a big ball of elefantsnot, built from tiny scraps of blu tack snuck away whilst teachers weren’t looking. Gary will be working with children from Ysgol Bro Teyrnon in Newport to develop the script further.
Alongside working with Lydia and Gary, we will be re-commissioning two plays from our extensive back catalogue of over 40+ plays. Our challenge as a partnership has always been how we promote and disseminate these plays beyond the life of the project because they are a great resource. On our website you will find links to some of the back catalogue, which we hope will be a step to helping these plays having a longer life. For this year, we will use the Treatments from the two plays we have commissioned and find two plays that contrast with what we have (we can’t have two plays with Taco eating Panda’s…) This will allow our teachers to have choice and flexibility, especially important as we are a national project and one size definitely doesn’t fit all when it comes to play suitability for individual classes. It’s an exciting year ahead for Playhouse.
