My time with People’s Theatre Collective
After more than eleven years with People's Theatre Collective, I've decided that the time has come to step down as Artistic Director.
It's a strange thing to write. This organisation has had a huge influence on my career, my values and practice and it's difficult to imagine not being part of its day to day life. At the same time, I know it's the right moment. The Collective has an exciting future ahead and I know it's time for others to lead its next chapter.
I’m pleased to share some of my reflections and memories of working with the organisation below.
Looking back, I'm still amazed that the then called 'CTC' (or Cherwell Theatre Company) took a chance on me. In 2014 I was a 26 year old actor with very little directing experience and somehow found myself running workshops with young people, then co-writing a pantomime, directing it and eventually being supported to become Artistic Director. That opportunity changed my life.
The company's co-founder Nasser Memarzia gave me that first chance, as he did for many others, but so many other people have invested their time in helping me grow into the role. In particular, Debs Howe has been my closest collaborator. As trustee, Co-Chair and now Strategic Director, she's mentored me, challenged me and supported me through every stage of my time with the Collective. Our Chair, David Adkin, the board of trustees, our staff team and countless freelancers have all played a part too. The trustees deserve particular thanks. For years they've given their time, energy and expertise because they believe young people in Banbury deserve ambitious and accessible cultural opportunities. It's easy to forget that so much of what organisations like ours achieve is only possible because of people quietly giving up their evenings and weekends.
When I look back at the work itself, I can almost see it in three chapters. It's impossible to do eleven years justice in a single post, but these are the moments that stay with me.
The first was rooted in the company's long tradition of bringing professional artists and young people together to make theatre. Taking on the baton from Nasser, we developed and co-wrote a cycle of three pantomimes through workshops with young people, giving them genuine influence over the stories we told and the way in which we told them. Each time we increased the scope of the music and participatory elements, alongside increasing the ownership and inclusion of the young people and audiences involved. I was proud to continue Nasser's legacy for creating surprising, subversive and 'cheeky' work, which refused to conform to gender stereotype characters or reductive cultural clichés.
A big part of this process was learning from some incredible collaborators: actors like Liam Nooney, Jess Lloyd-Jones, Penny Tasker, Jess Braviner, Holly Creed, Gareth Fordred, Andy Allen and Neil Hobson, and composers like Adrian Banks, all of whom brought joy and creativity to every rehearsal room, but crucially, skilfully supported and mentored the young people performing with them in a process that was joyful and mutually beneficial. Many of those young people I worked with during this time are now professional artists themselves and having watched them grow into colleagues is one of the things I'm proudest of, as well as all the other young people now living their lives having taken the confidence and friendships they forged with the company into adulthood.
Alongside that, we held onto something that's been at the heart of the company since its beginnings in 2004: creating a place where young people who might feel like outsiders can find they belong. That was what youth theatre meant to me when I was younger and it's something I always wanted the organisation to protect.
The second chapter was one of artistic adventure. Working alongside incredible partners including Creation Theatre, Royal & Derngate, Banbury College and the always supportive Cherwell District Council, we began making ambitious site-specific and outdoor work in places that most people would never imagine as theatres. A decommissioned nuclear bunker beneath Banbury Town Hall. Wood Green's open-air swimming pool. New housing developments, parks and marketplaces. We also produced our first full-length play written by a young playwright at Tooley's historic seventeenth-century boatyard. Sophie Beckinsale, who joined the company in 2019 and continues to do amazing work across our programmes, must also be recognised for her work during this period and beyond.
The Myth plays will always have a special place in my heart. They began with an idea from our young people and grew into joyful, festival-style productions inspired by Greek theatre, with live music, giant puppets and audiences gathering in communities that often had little shared cultural infrastructure. Everywhere we went, it felt like theatre creating a reason for people to come together.
Then came the pandemic. Looking back, 2021 feels emblematic of everything the Collective became during that period. Whether conducting R&D into online workshop practice or working outdoors with social distancing, every conversation started with the same question: "What do young people need from us now?"
Pete Stays Home, written by Renata Allen with songs by Josh Baldwin and based on the book by Karra MacFarlane and Kim Hankinson, toured school playgrounds as children emerged from lockdown, using the story of a family of hibernating bears to help younger children make sense of an experience none of us had lived through before. I shed a few tears hugging my own three-year-old son at many of these performances and saw many other parents doing the same. Do You Accept?, our play exploring social media and online safety, became a digital film with live online workshops facilitated by the actors when we couldn't reach schools in person. Sam and Zoe vs Evermore, co-written with the wonderful Jessica Lloyd-Jones and Krage Brown, grew from conversations with our young company into a game theatre production using Dungeons & Dragons to explore young men's mental health. Our first Tell Your Story Festival transformed Banbury's LIDL supermarket car park into a youth-led arts festival because it was one of the few places we could safely gather. Alongside all of that, we created and toured Myth II, rehearsing almost entirely outside (how anyone didn't catch COVID is beyond me – the great Zeus himself must have been watching over us!) and laid the foundations for Song of the Summer, a deeply personal play I'd been developing for six years about my experiences as a teenager coming of age in the mid-2000s Northampton indie music scene, which I later had the privilege of directing in co-production with Royal & Derngate.
Many of these projects would not have existed if we'd simply carried on making the work we'd planned before the pandemic. They came from listening more carefully, responding more quickly and trusting young people to tell us what mattered. It was exhausting. It was chaotic. It was also one of the most creative periods of my career.
The most recent chapter has been about listening even more carefully. Perhaps the biggest shift came away from productions altogether. We made the decision to remove participation fees and establish Amplify, taking weekly creative activity into communities across Banbury rather than waiting for young people to find us. Nicki Watts and Kizzy Thorne especially deserve enormous credit for driving this work forward, alongside our staff team, trustees and brilliant local partners including Banbury Mosque, Let's Play Project, The Hill Community Centre, Style Acre, Connections Support and The Mill Arts Centre. Together they helped reshape how the organisation thinks about access, creating regular opportunities for disabled young people, refugee communities, young people from Muslim backgrounds and those living in some of the town's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Amplify has done huge work in removing barriers so that the Collective can genuinely belong to the whole town and it's fundamentally changed the organisation's approach to our projects and governance.
Alongside that came projects exploring healthy relationships and violence against women (Enact), new work around emotional wellbeing for younger children (A Home for Harmony) and most recently, the journey towards genuine co-creation through Revolutions.
Looking back now, I can see that all of these changes were leading us towards this point. Every stage gave young people a little more ownership, a little more creative agency and a bigger role in shaping the organisation itself. In no small part, this next chapter has been made possible by the tireless work and brilliant strategic thinking of Debs Howe, who is now the Strategic Director of the company. More than anyone, she has helped take the Collective to the place where our new Revolutions strategy could simply ask the next question: what happens when young people don't just influence the work, but co-create it from the beginning?
Seeing our summer 2026 production The Scar emerge from that process has been like watching a new artistic identity begin to take shape. That's one of the reasons I know this is the right time to step aside. The next chapter already belongs to the young people and artists who are creating it.
Most careers have people who change your way of thinking and ultimately, your life. Mine certainly has. I want to say thank you to every young person who's trusted us with their creativity. To every freelancer, facilitator, actor, musician, designer, stage manager and technician who brought ideas, generosity and imagination into rehearsal rooms. To every member of staff I've had the privilege of working alongside. To every funder, partner school, community organisation and supporter who believed in what we were trying to build. I feel terrible not to name every single one of you, but this is already a long post and you know who you are: THANK YOU. Conveniently, the Collective does have a handy page where we can at least credit the funders and partners who have given such support: https://www.peoplestheatrecollective.org.uk/our-supporters
And once more, especially to Debs Howe. Throughout my entire time with the Collective you've been there: first as a trustee, then as Co-Chair and now as Strategic Director. More than anyone, you've helped shape the organisation we've become. You've challenged my thinking, supported me through difficult moments, celebrated the successes and guided the organisation with remarkable care, consistency and determination. I wouldn't be the artist or leader I am today without your belief, your support and your friendship.
As for me, I'm looking forward to spending more time directing, writing and developing my own projects. I'm also looking forward to having a little more space for family life after a very full few years.
I'll still be cheering the Collective on from the sidelines. It's an organisation that has meant the world to me and I can't wait to see the young people, artists and leaders who write its next chapter.
