In the Summer of 2021, Down Stage Write began working in Whitleigh’s Sir John Hunt community sports college as part of With Flying Colours, a brand-new playmaking and performance programme for children and young people in Plymouth.
After the end of our 6 weeks with Sir John Hunt, we took away our draft of The Approach (named by the group in the final session) to professionally record, edit it and produce it for online sharing.
Our Guest Actors from weeks 4 and 6 performed in the play. They were Sam Plumbe, Phillipa Gunning and Kieran West, all recent graduates of the Plymouth Conservatoire acting degree. Our decision to include them in the content generation process proved to be a useful one – it meant they had a clear grasp of the zanier characters and plot points in the script and allowed them to voice the play the way Sir John Hunt’s year 8s had intended. Our brilliant Editor, Alex Robins, also kindly lent us his voice on the day to enable us to make the multitude of character voices in the play as distinct as possible.
The Approach follows a young diver, Tim, and his partner Ash. The pair are targeted by a local gang thanks to a debt owed by Tim’s Mum before she passed away. Ash is abducted by the gang with the help of James, an enemy made at school, and Tim and the police must race against time to save his boyfriend.
You can listen to our recording of The Approach here: *INSERT LINK*
Ultimately this first block of work in Sir John Hunt was great fun. Down Stage Write felt completely supported by the School and their staff (notable mentions for Jason Beynon, Katie Lewis, the Denise Stanton and Julie Bevan), and as a result, we have come away with a co-created audio play that honours both the techniques and tools we explored with the young people, and the ideas, characters and scenes they came up with.
Here’s to next Term!
Jon and Sam