For over 40 years, Pilot Theatre has been making adventurous and ambitious work for younger audiences. Founded in 1981, the company has been based in York since 2001, but its work regularly tours the UK. Recent shows have included stage versions of Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses and Zana Fraillon's The Bone Sparrow, while its most recent show, A Song for Ella Grey, based on David Almond's relocation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to the northeast, has been sensitively adapted for the stage by playwright Zoe Cooper.
Its work doesn't shy away from complexity and nuance. It is often formally inventive and never talks down to its audience, intended to connect with teenagers and young people on their own level, to tell stories that speak to them, always with an awareness that for many in the audience this may be their first experience of live theatre, and the inherent responsibility that comes with that.
Participation and creative education
While its work for younger audiences is front and centre of what they do, says Esther Richardson, Pilot's artistic director since 2016, ‘we've always had an emphasis on participation and creative education.’ This was part of what attracted her to the job. ‘I always loved Pilot's work. It felt different and took risks.’
Pilot's associate director Oliver O'shea oversees a lot of this education work. ‘As a touring company, our learning programme is nearly always connected with our work. We're always thinking about how we can support teachers and empower them,’ he says.
‘All of the projects that we lead with schools relate back to the work that we're doing,’ he continues. Pilot publishes extensive free learning resources for every production. These include video interviews with cast and creatives, ideal for connecting students and teachers with the artists making the work and triggering conversations about it. ‘We always try to connect the artists making the work with young people,’ says O'shea.
Their educational material also includes filmed extracts of the plays. ‘Experiential learning is supported and complemented by being able to really focus in on particular scenes and analyse particular moments,’ he explains.
A network
As a touring company, Pilot has cultivated a national network of teachers, says O'shea, ‘who are there to advise us and give us feedback on what we're doing, to help shape the future of our education work.’
In addition to working with teachers, the company does plenty of work with young people too. They have a programme of extended learning projects. These are not just focused on theatre, he says, they encompass all the arts. ‘Although we are a theatre company, we want to develop the next generation of musicians, composers, artists, and writers as well.’
© ROBERT DAY
Pilot Theatre's production of Noughts & Crosses
With every project they will try to tailor their extended learning material to the show. ‘We don't have a set model,’ says O'shea. ‘We co-create this material with the artists we're working with and with teachers. We work really closely with teachers to think about what would be most beneficial to their young people.’
Wherever possible their work with young people is participatory. Ultimately, they want them to have experience of creating something, to have a sense of agency. ‘It's about including young people and saying you have ownership of this stage and telling the story you want to tell,’ he says. However, they recognise that making a stage piece might not be suitable for every school group and can tailor their approach accordingly.
Young people in the creative process
The educational and artistic strand of the company work very closely together, says Richardson. They often consult young people as part of the creative process. She cites The Bone Sparrow as a good example, where feedback from a teenage reading group was used to inform S Shakthidharan's adaptation of the text. ‘That's really useful, because then you have in mind the audience that you're making this work for from the start,’ she says.
For their 2019 production of Alex Wheatle's hit YA novel Crongton Knights, they commissioned Beatbox Academy founder and theatre maker Conrad Murray to compose the score for the show and worked with a group of young people from Theatre Peckham to help the cast get a feeling for the material. ‘It really was a brilliant icebreaker,’ she says. ‘It got all the actors to relax, though they had to concede that they just weren't as good as rapping as the kids were.’
Involving young people in the creative process in this way helps shape the work they make. ‘Often, these processes will affirm some hunches that we already have. But sometimes they reveal to us something that we hadn't even thought of,’ she says. ‘It's a nice kind of symbiotic process.’
A transformation
One of Pilot's landmark productions, former artistic director Marcus Romer's bracingly physical production of William Golding's Lord of the Flies was a game-changer for the company when it was first produced in 1998. It won several awards and proved so popular that it was revived in 2008. O'shea remembers encountering it when he was at school himself and the impact it had on him. He brings the memory of the sense of wonder to his work today.
Encountering theatre while at a young age can be transformative, both Richardson and O'shea agree. When Richardson was working at Nottingham Playhouse she recalls matinee performances would be heaving with school children, but that's a far less common sight these days.
‘It's a really sorry state of affairs now,’ says Richardson. ‘But I'm really proud of the way in which we keep going.’ It would, she continues, be easier for the company if they just produced Animal Farm or other set texts, but he remains committed to bringing a variety of work to the stage and taking what in many quarters would be deemed risky choices. ‘Because of our history, I think it's really important that we don't give up on that,’ she says. ‘I think we actually have a moral and ethical responsibility as well, to artists and to new work.’
First experiences
‘We would like the curriculum to change,’ says Richardson, ‘and to keep changing and keep evolving. So, we must keep going and we have to keep thinking about the conversations that we would like to be happening in schools? Who are the artists that we would like young people to know about?’
Just as O'shea was inspired by watching Lord of the Flies, Richardson hopes future generations of artists will be inspired by The Bone Sparrow or A Song for Ella Grey. ‘That's an extraordinary privilege,’ she says. ‘Those first experiences of going to the theatre at school are very imprinted on us.’
‘We're increasingly thinking about advocacy and our role as a company,’ says O'shea. ‘In terms of changing the curriculum and restoring the status of arts in schools.’ Having the opportunity to take part in the kind of education work they do can be life-changing for young people, he says. He's seen the impact it can have, recalling one young girl moved to tears by hearing Turkish, her language, spoken on stage, by seeing characters on stage from the same part of the world as her. The girl's teacher wrote to them afterwards to say what an extraordinary moment that had been, not just for the girl, but for the whole student group, says O'shea, ‘because then they were able to go back to class and understand better this child's story.’
It is, however, a really difficult time for teachers. ‘The circumstances for teachers and schools are really tough,’ he says, ‘but so many drama teachers do incredible work, and what we're trying to do is support them as best we can to make these experiences happen.’