Playhouse Festival
Bristol Old Vic, Theatre Royal Plymouth, York Theatre Royal, Birmingham Rep, Theatre Iolo & Polka TheatreWe are excited to relaunch Playhouse – Primary Schools Festival!
Playhouse is a national collaboration between Theatre Royal Plymouth, York Theatre Royal, Polka Theatre, Birmingham Rep, Theatre Iolo and Bristol Old Vic. The six theatres have worked together to commission professional playwrights to write short plays specifically for large casts of primary school children to perform.
Each piece has been directed by teachers and supported by Bristol Old Vic Technical and Engagement team.
Playhouse celebrates the talent and creativity of teachers and young people in Bristol and South Gloucester.
Show schedule:
Tues 5 July, 6 - 7:30pm
Gillingstool Primary - Cross Words by Paul Birch
St Werburghs Primary - Dreaming By Day by Tanika Gupta
Wed 6 July, 6 - 7:30pm
Shield Road Primary - Dreaming By Day by Tanika Gupta
Stoke Park Primary School - Wake Up! by Jenny Drury
Thurs 7 July, 6 - 7:30pm
St Anne's CE Primary - Big, Small, Lost, Found Things by Miriam Battye
St Anne's CE Primary - Wake Up! by Jenny Drury
About the Stories
Cross Words by Paul Birch
Hillview Primary School has a big problem. The children just can’t get along. To make matters worse the school is in a larger community which is in conflict with itself. The problem is language. Everyone seems to be speaking a different language and no one is listening. Too many cross words are being spoken. But something is about to change…
Wake Up! by Jenna Drury
10 year old Sam knows all there is to know about Bornean orang-utans. She has even made her best friends a gang of imaginary apes.
This endangered menagerie are there for Sam no matter what, but she does worry about them. Day by day, climate anxiety creeps out of the news and into Sam’s nightmares. Her family are too preoccupied with their daily squabbles to notice Sam’s darkening state of mind.
Step up new kid on the block, Billy Brisk. Billy is an eco-warrior. When Sam connects deforestation to the stuff in her home and the chocolate made right here in her city, Billy calls for Direct Action.
But who is going to listen to a bunch of kids? And when will the grown-ups wake up?
This is a play about climate anxiety, the dark and light of a child’s imagination and the super power of the young to hit the headlines. After all, would anyone have heard of Greta Thunberg if she had been a forty year old bald bloke?
Dreaming by Day by Tanika Gupta
Dreaming by Day is a play about pupils at school asked to bring in an object of importance to them to class in a ‘show and tell’ lesson. As each pupil brings in a world atlas, a football, a faded photo and a toy robot, magic happens and we are transported into each child’s hopes for the future , dreams and unfulfilled yearnings. Bitter sweet, this is a short play which all the class can join in.
Big Small Lost Found Things by Miriam Battye
The Youngs are 9 ¾ but wonder what it would be like to Older. The Olds come along and tell them that they need to lose most of the things that make them Young. Once they shed those traits the Youngs are whisked off to a world of Lost Things: words, imagination and memories. They realise that maybe being Older isn’t necessarily what they want to be or who they really are but how do they get back to being Young? Maybe they need to go back, to go forwards…
