Guest Blog: Making theatre a platform to help as well as entertain

Epsilon’s last production, “Skin Tight” at Park Theatre, was two years in the making and was the success we’d hoped it would be and more; so obviously when Jemma, Epsilon’s Artistic Director, and I sat down after the whirlwind subsided and said, “wouldn’t it be great to do a season of plays next year, back to back with cross casting, just like the old fashioned Rep” we of course thought this would be marvellous, and you know what, as hard work as it is, we weren’t wrong.

Angela Bull

We spoke to our friends at Park Theatre again and pitched our idea to produce two plays, with a linking theme and to take residency for two months over the summer. Jez Bond, Park Theatre Artistic Director, loved the plays we suggested and booked us in.

The theme I spoke about that links both plays is bullying, both of the physical kind and the faceless intensity of cyber-bullying.

Hendrix in Chicken Shop is from lesbian parents and hideously bullied at school because of it, “If your mum is gay then clearly, you must be too”. Crystal Springs, however, follows an arc of many small seemingly trivial acts that end up in tragedy.

We had already started working on Anna Jordan’s play Chicken Shop for a scratch night towards the end of last year which was received with great enthusiasm. This is a heartbreaking story about the trials of growing up, the transition into adulthood, where it can lead and how it can shape the rest of your life. It also shows that when in adulthood, it’s not necessarily easier.

American playwright, Kathy Rucker, approached us to produce her play Crystal Springs at the beginning of this year. On reading it I had the overwhelming fear of what it must be like to grow up in today’s cyber intensive world.

When I was a kid, computing at school was trying to understand binary. I’m sorry but no matter how many 11100000111100000 equations we did then, it would never have prepared me for the startling fact that the number of teenage suicides caused by cyber-bulling in the UK this year alone is in double figures. 

Kids have always been cruel but, believe it or not, there was a time that when you said something cruel and hurtful in the playground, it stayed in the playground and was most likely forgotten by lunchtime. Today, it must be so stressful for kids finding they’ve been “unfriended” or “trolled”. Isn’t growing up hard enough as it is without all this nonsense? I never thought I’d hear myself bless the fact that I’m in my 40’s and can choose not to be on Facebook or Twitter if I don’t want to be and not feel that I have to be to fit in.

It has always been a focus of mine to produce plays that will make you leave the theatre thinking about what you have just seen and not about what topping you’re going to have on your pizza, so when these plays were presented to us, the decision to take them on wasn’t hard.

I honestly think that, yes, making theatre is a great deal of fun and hard work but it’s also a huge responsibility. It not only gives you a platform to entertain, it can give you a platform to help.

Crystal Springs and Chicken Shop both bring a harsh reality from different angles into the light. Most of us have been bullied at some point; I was beaten up on the way home from school for wearing reactor light glasses that went dark on a bright afternoon in November. You forget about it, ignore it, pretend it isn’t happening; if you’re lucky you get over it and move on but some people can’t and don’t. Working on these plays has made me very aware of how much bullying is still a hard subject to broach with people so we wanted to make sure that if anyone seeing the plays had been or is still being affected by this, they’re not alone and there is someone to talk to.

We’ve been working with the Ben Cohen Stand Up Foundation who support organisations to eradicate bullying. Lise Beynon has been a great strength and we are so very pleased to have their backing. It doesn’t always have to end up as a statistic; there is someone out there who can help. If you need to talk to someone, contact them - www.standupfoundation.com

These two plays we are producing at Park Theatre this August and September are not just to entertain but hopefully also to help. There is humour, heightened by a few tears, but I feel these plays are real and isn’t that what theatre is meant to be? Hopefully, when you see them you’ll agree. 

If you do come along, please join us for a well-deserved drink in the bar after the show and meet the fantastic team behind these two wonderful plays. 

Angela Bull

Crystal Springs runs at the Park Theatre between 5th and 31st August and Chicken Shop runs between 2nd and 28th September. Please visit www.epsilonproductions.co.uk for further information.

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