PSFNT2: Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse

Backstage

20 September 2021

Positive Stories For Negative Times Season 2: Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse

Positive Stories for Negative Times is an international participatory project by Wonder Fools in association with the Traverse Theatre.. Season 2 included 7 exciting new plays written especially for young people aged 6–25 with varying and flexible cast sizes. The writers worked with the newly established Positive Stories Youth Board to ensure that the plays are not only made for young people, but with them too. Here’s an introduction to Wonder Fools’ own Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse who have written Spyrates (Spies vs Pirates) 2: Journey to the Forbidden Island, a play featuring spies, pirates, robots, talking animals and everything in between, Spyrates is an interactive, playful and imaginative adventure story for ages 6+ with an accompanying process drama.

The plays are written specifically for the times we are living in and were free to participating groups from September 2021 — July 2022.

About Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse

Jack and Robbie are playwrights and theatre-makers. Together they co-founded Wonder Fools, a theatre company that creates contemporary new work based on a diverse range of current and historical real-life stories. From these stories the company have taken theatre productions, performance installations and workshops to over 10,000 people across Scotland, with over 15,000 more engaging with their digital work online.

To date they have written and produced three full productions for Wonder Fools: McNeill of Tranent: Fastest Man in the World (2014-2015), an autobiographical show performed by retired athlete George McNeill, who in 1972 was the fastest man in the world despite never being allowed to compete in the Olympic or Commonwealth Games; The Coolidge Effect (2016-2020) an interactive performance that examines how pornography affects our mental health, relationships and sexual experiences using a blend of storytelling, poetry and science, which is now available as an audio play; and 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War (2018–2020) telling the true stories of four miners from Prestonpans that volunteered as part of the International Brigade.

As part of Wonder Fools and Traverse Theatre’s international participatory project Positive Stories for Negative Times, they wrote Ozymandias with young people from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Widening Access to the Creative Industries department.

Most recently, Robbie and Jack were commissioned by Capital Theatres and the Traverse Theatre, creating new audio play with and for people with lived experience of dementia in Edinburgh, When the Sun Meets the Sky .

About Spyrates

Ahoy, Agent! Are you team Spies? Or are you team Pirates?

Come join the adventure and the search for the lost treasure!

Captain Connell has been forced to walk the plank. They are an outcast – washed up on an exotic island. But wait…this can’t be the Forbidden Island? Can it?! The place where legend has it the lost treasure was buried many moons ago…? IT IS.

Can Captain Connell find the treasure before the spies do? Can they find it before the pirates? The spies have their helicopter, the pirates have their swords but Captain Connell has bags of curiosity and an unlikely friendship with new pal Derek the Dog. Will they succeed?

There’s only one way to find out – come and join the adventure!

Featuring spies, pirates, robots, talking animals and everything in between, ‘Spyrates’ is an interactive, playful and imaginative adventure story for ages 6+ with an accompanying process drama.