Acts of Resistance is a provocative and playful new show, created by four communities across England and award-winning writer Stef Smith. Born from Headlong Futures, Headlong’s bold and ambitious outreach initiative, the play will be performed on Sunday 7 and Monday 8 April at Bristol Old Vic.
In these politically uncertain times, our country is more divided than ever before.
Headlong Futures set out to unearth stories behind these fractures and ask how we can work together across generations, across backgrounds and across the nation.
Acts of Resistance is the culmination of this; a renewed sense of collective vision-making which looks at what we have inherited and what we are willing to leave behind.
Over eighteen months, playwright Stef Smith, and Headlong’s Outreach Associate, Rob Watt, have been working with four partner organisations and participants from their surrounding communities, many of whom do not engage with the arts and often feel their voices are not heard.
Each group worked with an Associate Director from within their community to present a locally based piece centred around their own unique stories; examining the questions and the contradictions that seemed most important to their immediate lives. Stef Smith, will take these individual works and evolve them into one larger original play, Acts of Resistance, directed by Rob Watt.
Headlong Futures has been collaborating with the following venues and groups;
· Theatre Royal Plymouth – Headlong Futures Associate Director Lucy Hirst has been working with a group of ex-military personnel and their families. They range in ages from 21 to 75 years.
· Bristol Old Vic – Headlong Futures Associate Director Julia Head has been working with a group of 23 young people from in and around the Lockleaze estate
· Brewery Arts, Kendal – Headlong Futures Associate Director Jon Randall has been working with an isolated elderly group of senior citizens from rural parts of the Lake District.
· New Perspectives, East Midlands – Headlong Futures Associate Director Jayne Williams has been working with a community group based in a library ranging from ages 12-82 from the Mansfield area.
The cast of Acts of Resistance will be made up exclusively from members of each of the communities listed above.
Headlong Futures and Acts of Resistance is generously supported by Backstage Trust, The Buffini Chao Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Garfield Weston Foundation.
