A Small Mind At The Theatre

I have a special interest in the Royal & Derngate Youth Theatre's React-Respond after my play The Grandfather Clock was the very first play to be performed last year in its inception. The idea is that the theatre group reacts to the current Made In Northampton production with an original slightly themed response to the story within. Last year audience members were given the chance to submit ten minute plays to be performed in response to the then production Gaslight. Mine and three others had the honour to start the React-Respond ball rolling. This time the youth theatre were to take existing work, that of William Shakepeare himself and weave it into a production linked to The Herbal Bed. Using sonnets and extracts from his work, director Ben Spiller took the young actors and ourselves to the not too distant future where children have once again become the ownership of their fathers after an old law is revived. Ophelia (Jasmine Smellie), who herself is banned from going out w...

The National Theatres Connections series of plays had been one of my highlights of my trips to R&D during 2014. Their short and snappy single act style kept them all interesting and never overstaying their welcome. So I was more than ready for my first encounter with one of this years Connections plays ahead of the main week of performances at R&D later in the year. Hacktivists is written by Ben Ockrent, whose slightly wacky but socially relevant play Breeders I had seen at St James Theatre last year. Hacktivists is less surreal, but does have a fair selection of what some people would call odd. Myself of the other hand would very much be home with them. So we are presented with thirteen nerdy "friends" who meet to hack, very much in what is termed the white hat variety. This being for good, as we join them they appear to have done very little more than hacked and created some LED light device. Crashing in to spoil the party however comes Beth (Emma-Ann Cranston)...