James Meteyard

The Big House Anthology is a celebration of the last decade of work and plays by a unique theatre company, featuring five original plays that offer a chance for stories with diverse casts to contribute to the canon of theatre's literature. As a UK-based theatre company, The Big House empowers care leavers and other disadvantaged young people through performance and long-term support. Their plays are born from the hearts and minds of the young people they engage, with this anthology offering five very different plays: a runner struck down by MS; a rapper who spits and snarls and tries to find it in herself to forgive; a teenager who fights for wealth, status and respect in the underworld of county lines; a cackling cowboy they call Corona; and a dog that has been tracked, murdered and stuck in a stew. This anthology celebrates the explosive creativity that comes from mobilising and platforming diverse voices, and its importance in generating social change. Framed and introduced by directors and writers discussing their practice, along with an introduction by Jez Butterworth, this is a book for students, educators, artists, theatre-practitioners, social workers and storytellers to tell stories that are rarely told, let alone with such fierce authenticity.

Jessie's sick of Leeds. A city she thought she would never leave. But the aimlessness of the people she once believed she would always need is suffocating. Wondering whether she's had enough, in a dirty nightclub not too far off, Jessie's blinded by the light of Allie Touch, a singer song-writer with a taste for big ambitions, amongst some other stuff. Feeling rough in the five in the morning sunlight, Jessie's sight is fixed on the path that Allie lights And like a moth to a flame in the night, She ignites. Written in spoken word poetry and underscored entirely by original music created live, Electrolyte is an explosive piece of gig-theatre exploring grief, depression and psychosis. Electrolyte is the winner of the 2018 LET Award and it's development was supported by The Watermill Theatre and Theatr Clwyd.