Play of hope and despair from young people at Brighton Festival

Performances are on May 4 and 5 in Brighton Dome Studio Theatre at 7.30pm, following on from their sell-out successes in the 2023 and 2022 festivals with BAKKHAI and Romeo & Juliet.

Earth Teeth by Sarah Leaver has been written for young adults and developed alongside the young company, under the direction of Tanushka Marah, a play which promises a “heady mix of stark naturalism, dark humour, poetry and ritual.”

“It is a play of the times: hopeful and desperate – Jerusalem for young people!” Tanushka says. And it chimes in with the ethos of the company.

“Arts and culture are for everyone. There should not be a class or race or ability divide in terms of who can access arts and culture and who can make arts and culture. We want young people to push themselves creatively, intellectually and emotionally, and with what we do we want to show the world what happens in young people's minds. They are a lot more brave and bold than people might give them credit for. We are talking about politics and we're also talking about touching on some difficult subjects.

“But the other thing is the company is really inclusive. We have young people who want to go to drama school and we train them up. We do a lot of mentoring and we help with pathways into the creative industry but we also have a lot of young people who are just maybe very shy or just wanting to gain confidence and to make friends. We absolutely believe that we can have everybody together. It is all very supportive and it is also very supportive within itself. There is a lot of warmth there. The last show we did the age range was 12 to 24 and everybody looked after everybody else. They became their own lovely little community, and actually my happiest memories are always when I hear that they've gone off together to the cinema or that they've made friendships or that they hang out together.

“Most of the plays that we do are devised and created from within but this is not. But the writer did spend a long time with us developing her writing. She developed the writing of these teenage voices, and the young voices in the script are very realistic and very powerful. It's about young people's place in the world, a world that they did not make but that they find themselves in now. They find themselves in a place where they find themselves against an unstoppable force in terms of what is happening to the environment and everything that is happening, and the lead character wants to do more than just protest. They have had a protest, and it has not worked. She wants to continue the journey, and she takes on the idea of giving something to the earth and the idea of the earth having its own voice.”

The company was previously Windmill Young Actors: “We changed the name in 2023. We had given it a lot of consideration and we just didn't like the old name, either Windmill or Young or Actors. It is not just about actors. It is about making work. It is about being a part of the creative community. And the word young seemed slightly diminishing. We were based at the Windmill Theatre but we're not anymore and it just felt like the word Windmill was a bit babyish. Changing the name was really scary to do but we had a whole rebranding as well and a new logo. I just happened to come across the theory of ThirdSpace which is a place of radical openness, a place where the binary in society is collapsed and where people can come together in a place of creative chaos. I came across that concept and I liked it. And now it's great that we have a name that I don't feel embarrassed about when I say it!”