Cardiff and Bradford-based theatre company Common/Wealth has announced the full cast and creative team for their bold new production, Demand The Impossible.
The world premiere will take place at the Corn Exchange, Newport from 6–13 October 2025, with a press night on 7 October.
Part-performance, part-gig, part-sensory experience, Demand The Impossible interrogates police injustice and the infiltration of activist networks by undercover officers.
The production is rooted in real-life testimonies and developed in collaboration with those directly impacted by the ‘Spycops’ scandal, which is currently the subject of a national public inquiry.
The cast includes Bianca Ali, Hussina Raja and Soul Roberts. Live music and composition will be provided by Ollie Emanuel, Ruari Floyd and Jassen Summogum.
The creative team features Director Rhiannon White, Creative Technologist and Performer Nathaniel Mason, Choreographer Gareth Chambers, and Text by Taylor Edmonds.
Dramaturgy is by Sarah Fielding, with Set and Visual Design by Studio of Mark Gubb, Lighting Design by Andy Purves, and Costume and Prop Design by Efa Dyfan.
The production team includes Production Manager Nia Thomson, Creative Producer Camilla Brueton, Community Producer Chantal Williams, Communications Associate Rachel Dawson, Community Co-ordinator Eugenia Taylor, and Assistant Producer Sophie Lindsey.
Demand The Impossible explores the impact of over 144 undercover police officers who infiltrated more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and 2010, often forming intimate relationships under false pretences.
The show is presented in partnership with Police Spies Out of Lives, Undercover Research Group, and the Spycops Info Podcast, and supported by Wales Millennium Centre and previously by National Theatre Wales.
Rhiannon White, Co-Artistic Director of Common/Wealth, said:
“For years, friends of ours had their lives infiltrated and spied on by the police. They were people who believed in a better world, who wanted more for everyone, and justice for those who had been wronged.
This was a significant breach of trust by the state; their agents systematically targeted people, befriending them, having intimate relationships, and insidiously planting roots in their lives. Their target’s crimes – demanding better.
Common/Wealth have been working with people whose lives have been impacted by police infiltration and injustice. Activists, workers, families and working-class people whose worlds have been turned upside down and inside out by the state.
This show is raging. A call to arms, to not look away, to get swept up in a raucous punk gig, hear stories shaped by real-life testimonies and experience the world of immersive surveillance.
The show asks tough questions – what happens to those prepared to speak up? How much power do we really have in shaping our future? As the Cardiff Anarchist Network said, they come at us because we are strong, not because we are weak. It’s time to demand the impossible.”
Tom Fowler, host of the Spycops Info Podcast, added:
“The deployment of secret undercover political police has had an immeasurable impact on those who were infiltrated but it has also had significant consequences for society in general.
It is challenging to express the enormity of the implications of undermining, destabilising and subverting every progressive social movement over 50 years. It has left us with extremism at the centre of UK politics, haunted by the ghosts of a stolen future for a better world.”
Chris Brian of Undercover Research Group said:
“I am really buzzed to be involved with this project – and know that Common/Wealth will do justice to this great injustice and bring it to a new audience in an insightful, innovative and thrilling way.”
Lindsey from Police Spies Out of Lives commented:
“Successive UK governments have spent decades using ‘spycops’ to trash the human rights of a large section of the public. These secret state operations, using women as disposable perks of the job, reveal a breathtaking misogyny. I can’t wait to see how Common/Wealth interprets this scandal, most importantly our fightback—of which this production is a part.”
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
