Positive Stories for Negative Times: Season One

Backstage

1 July 2021

SEASON ONE (2020-21)

Positive Stories for Negative Times is a new national participatory project by Wonder Fools in association with Traverse Theatre. This innovative and exciting project responds to the lack of physical spaces for young people to participate in creative activities due to the pandemic, and instead allows them to come together to make new work online or live in the space if government guidelines allow.

Wonder Fools and the Traverse Theatre have co-commissioned some of the UK’s most exciting voices to write new plays for young people including Sabrina Mahfouz, Stef Smith, Chris Thorpe, Bea Webster and Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse. The plays are written specifically for the times we are living in and were free to participating groups between the ages of 8 and 25, from September 2020—July 2021. Groups were sent a handbook of exercises to help explore the play of their choice, and then invited to record and upload their performance to our interactive map, which celebrated all the brilliant work from young people across the UK and beyond.

The projected engaged staggering 2,700 young people and nearly 282 groups spanning Outer Hebrides to Madrid, Stockholm to Quebec. Check out the amazing work from Season One over on the Positive Stories website. You can also buy the anthology of all 5 plays on our store.

There is also now a Season 2 of the project, click the button below for more info and to sign up now.


Season 2

For more information about the project and to watch videos of work from across the world, click below:


POSITIVE STORIES.SCOT

PROGRAMME

Sabrina Mahfouz – Bad Bored Women of the Rooms

Chris Thorpe – Hold Out Your Hand

Stef Smith – The Pack

Bea Webster – Is This A Fairytale?

Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse – Ozymandias



Great seeing BYT @BraesHigh in action today exploring light and movement as part of filming for @wonder_fools #PositiveStoriesforNegativeTimes Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing some important dates tomorrow! ☺️ pic.twitter.com/4hbikcjSTk

— Ms Taylor (@mstdrama) June 2, 2021

Filming began tonight for our production of “Is This a Fairytale?” #WFPositiveStories @wonder_fools @traversetheatre @bea_p_webster pic.twitter.com/GfVz3KoXfp

— Imagine That Performing Arts (@ImagineThatPA) June 7, 2021

If you haven’t seen it yet, the question is why not? Time for our Year 9 Performers to take a bow. ‘Hold out Your Hand’ premiered this evening and you can catch it here: https://t.co/ctClTDy9RB@wonder_fools #positivestoriesfornegativetimes #ArtsMatter pic.twitter.com/JzAyESnold

— Dunraven (@Dunraven_School) May 20, 2021

Zoe is a member of our Young Company and working on Bad Bored Women of the Rooms as part of Positive Stories for Negative Times. Here she is to tell us what she enjoyed about being involved.

Watch the performance on https://t.co/fPbIiyeGgo at 6pm on the 29 Apr.@wonder_fools pic.twitter.com/bn3eq8m9iz

— Abdn Performing Arts (@APAWhatsOn) April 24, 2021

What a incredible evening of brilliant,inventive young people making exciting new work. ????

— Manya Benenson (@ManyaBenenson) April 27, 2021

Year 9 Drama Clubbers were fantastic last night performing @stefsmith new play ‘The Pack’, written during lockdown about one girl’s struggle with loneliness. It was a great experience – thanks to everyone who tuned in. #positivestoriesfornegativetimes #TormeadDramaRocks pic.twitter.com/4WaVKboV62

— Tormead Drama (@Tormead_Drama) May 8, 2021