2022’s Gainsborough Literacy Project saw us tackling themes of abuse, deception, and the nature of art. The young people wanted to explore the subject of loneliness and the idea that you can not only feel ignored by your family, but also by your town; a situation that could result in feeling apathetic and hopeless. They wanted to create a piece of theatre that investigated the idea that art could inspire and lift you out of such a seemingly hopeless life.

As always, we involved the young people in the casting process, bringing them into auditions to select 3 professional actors for the piece. They chose Michael Longhi, Beth Nixon, and Hopi Grace, and the group were to meet them again once we began our 10-day rehearsal period. We involved the young people in every stage of the production process so that they had ample opportunities to build their knowledge and skills, and grow in confidence, and the rehearsal process is a great place to achieve this. They learned how to give notes to the actors and also gained some useful industry insights from them in the Q&A session following rehearsal.

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Fleur is yet to find her place in life. Trapped in a battle of wills with her shiftless mother and a small town that pays her no attention, her life seems to be an endless cycle of apathy and hopelessness. When she unexpectedly stumbles across Tracy Emin’s ‘My Bed’, the infamous artwork that once scandalised the world, a spark is ignited in her. Fleur then embarks on an artistic crusade to turn her own messy life into a voyeuristic indulgence; a place where the gentrified classes can gawp at her squalor. What lengths will she go to, and what price will be paid?

Our second group of local 11-18-year-olds were tasked with creating a short curtain raiser ‘Long Was The Night’.  The play switched between the present day and the 1840s, and the group did a brilliant job of bringing the characters to life with empathy.

The play centred on the local tragedy of the Victorian Cholera epidemic, which affected everyone in Gainsborough in the late 1840s, but it focused on one family in particular whose eternal rest was disturbed when Trinity Church became Trinity Arts Centre in the 1980s. The group were fascinated by the recent TV programme ‘Help My House is Haunted’, which featured tales of the possible supernatural occurrences and CCTV footage captured by staff at the venue, and they wanted to include that in their story.