PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE arrives at Shakespeare North Playhouse on June 17, 2025, offering a unique, participatory theatre experience led by acclaimed theatre-makers Andy Smith and Lynsey O’Sullivan. This one-day event brings together three innovative plays that challenge audiences to engage with urgent social and political themes, from the climate emergency to institutional inequality and activism.
The event isn’t just about watching theatre-it’s about empowering attendees to take these plays into their own communities, with practical resources and guidance provided royalty-free. Smith and O’Sullivan’s approach aims to democratise theatre, spark meaningful dialogue, and inspire action on critical issues.
PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE takes place on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, at Shakespeare North Playhouse. For tickets and more information, click here.
You’re bringing PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE to Shakespeare North Playhouse-what can you tell us about it?
ANDY: PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE are plays that ask questions about acting both theatrically and politically: how do we act? What can we do?
The plays are not written to be rehearsed and performed in front of an audience but read and performed by the audience themselves. There is a host figure. At the beginning of the performance they explain how it works, scripts are handed out, and away we go.
Toward the end of each play, the written script stops and a discussion on the theme and story is encouraged. The plays can and have been performed in theatres, but also in schools, colleges and universities, at festivals and in community settings. Anywhere that people can meet and talk. Any room that can be made into a theatre for the duration.
We now want to give these plays away to other people. The brilliant people at Shakespeare North have let us use their theatre for a day, and we are inviting people from a broad range of places to come and join us – lecturers, teachers, freelance theatre makers, community workers, anyone interested.
Audience-participants will not only get to perform three of these plays together but also learn and understand how to organise and present performances of the work for themselves and their own communities. As well as some lunch, we’ll also give them a book with the plays in them and access to digital files of the scripts.
The event features three plays in one day, each tackling major issues like climate change, institutional inequality, and political activism. How do these themes come together in the performances?
ANDY I think the important thing to say here is that different perspectives on the themes are offered, with the understanding that there is no right or wrong way to approach what can sometimes feel like overwhelming stuff. The most important thing is that we think about these things and think about what we might do about them.
To encourage this, the plays all feature characters played by the people in the audience. This means that people might get to experience saying things that they might not think themselves or be asked to see something differently. This is important. We don’t want to try to provide answers to these big themes, but offer ideas, agency, empathy and something like an understanding of difference.
LYNSEY Generally, when we’re thinking about working together with our local communities or gathering people, it can be really challenging to know how to address some of these macro-topics. Especially as these ‘big’ topics can often be quite upsetting, triggering or difficult subjects for people to think about. So the plays offer a gentle & supportive framework, that can be offered as an invitation to people to think and talk about them.
PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE is described as participatory and empowering for audiences. What can attendees expect in terms of involvement and interaction?
ANDY As described above, the people in the audience are asked to play the people in the play. But it is important to let people know that not everyone has to read. Just being in the theatre and being there, listening and thinking is participatory. One of the things I have always loved about making theatre is the feeling of involvement and interaction that happens when you are in an audience watching something live and in front of you. That’s participation for me!
LYNSEY These plays straddle the worlds of theatre and participation, blurring the lines of what might be considered conventional in either camp. Everyone in the room is actively and equally part of the theatre performance, but in a very gentle way. We’ve performed these plays together with young people in schools, with adults in community centres, with students in Universities, in black box Theatre spaces and outdoor festivals. They can be done with anyone, anywhere.
You’re offering resources and guidance for attendees to stage these plays themselves, royalty-free. Why is this open-access approach so important to you?
ANDY This is within the spirit of the project. We are trying to operate on an economy that isn’t just about making money and providing something exclusive, but that be accessed and experienced by as many people as possible. I also think I wanted to challenge myself a bit! It’s easy to talk the talk, but not always easy to walk the walk.
LYNSEY We want to give the plays away, so that people can use them in their own context. We love the idea that they can support teachers, youth workers, academics, theatre makers around the country, or even further than that, to use them to gather people and have conversations about some of these themes. We know that Theatre, for hundreds of years, has been used as a political or social mechanism to debate, discuss and reflect on societies challenges. Why stop now?
Both of you have impressive backgrounds in socially engaged theatre. How has your experience shaped the creation and delivery of this project?
ANDY I think Lynsey has more of an impressive background in this than me! I’ve been involved in writing plays like this since 2017, alongside other work with other people (most prominently in a collaboration with theatre maker Tim Crouch), and teaching. A lot of people think and talk about my work as being experimental. Maybe it is! For me, the most important thing is that it is a theatre practice with the audience at the centre of it. For me, if you don’t have an audience then you don’t have any theatre.
LYNSEY I think Andy’s background as a writer and theatre maker and mine, being more in Applied & Socially Engaged practice, have complemented each other well and enabled us to get to this point with the project. The Plays are professional plays, they’re ‘proper’ theatre. But sometimes that is difficult for our sector to calibrate, when the plays also involve active participation from audiences and tackle key social issues. Sometimes we feel the need to put things in boxes.
I wouldn’t say PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE are rooted in Socially Engaged or Applied practice, but I would say they are a Social Theatre, which aims to offer people the opportunity to explore & discuss social challenges and as a technique to support social change.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see PLAYS FOR THE PEOPLE?
ANDY If anyone reading this is thinking about it, but wonders if it isn’t for them, then I would ask them to think again. This is a day for anyone who is curious, who is engaged in these themes, interested in how theatre might be used to think together about them, and about what people might be able to do when they get together in a room. You might be a theatre maker yourself, or teach it, be interested in it, or just work with people and communities that you would like to explore ideas with in what is (I hope) an interesting and playful way is. They are big themes that can sometimes feel overwhelming, but I hope our approach makes considering them less so, and even something we can enjoy doing together.
LYNSEY We really hope that a real diverse mix of people join us in June, as the beauty of the plays being read together by a group of people who have never met, is that they themselves reflect the make-up of society that we are trying to change.
