When This Is Over

As the UK emerges from its third national lockdown, Company Three is launching a project that puts young people and youth theatres at the heart of a big conversation about the future.

When This Is Over is a new play in which young people tell us their life stories: the things that have happened to them already, and the things that might happen for them in the future. Through these modest predictions for lives not yet lived we see ourselves for who we are right now – and how we want the world to change.

Company Three is working with 18 youth theatres across the UK as we develop the first draft of this play. Each company will workshop their own version this Spring in a process which will help us write a blueprint (devising guide), so that youth theatres everywhere can perform it as a collective expression of teenage voices leading up to COP26 in Glasgow later this Autumn.

First-stage participating companies are part of a community of practice, accessing workshops, resources, training and evaluation. We hope that all companies will present a live first-draft sharing of their work to an audience in May or June.

They will also help us curate a series of Gatherings – online conferences bringing youth theatre participants and leaders together with experts from outside the arts to think more broadly about the future of youth theatre in a post-Covid world. We will be publishing more information about these later on, including how other youth theatres can attend.

The first stage is already underway and will continue through April.