Changing Words | Collective Encounters

2016 saw the culmination of our Clore-Duffield Literature Awards-funded project, Changing Words. For six months, youth theatre members explored the work of political playwrights past and present, receiving writing masterclasses from artists including Luke Wright, Rommi Smith and Lizzie Nunnery and writing their own original pieces of political theatre.

These were performed at a rehearsed reading in The Everyman Studio on 16^th March 2016 to a warm and appreciative audience, many of whom commented on the high quality, diversity of subject matter and sophistication of views expressed.

The pieces ranged from personal, naturalistic storytelling about the death of a grandparent and subsequent reflections on the NHS, to comic absurdist sketches about the futility of war. The longer pieces were threaded together by a series of short poems created from famous political speeches using cut-up and blackout techniques.