Breeding Grounds
Our new play for 2022
Stewart and Ingrid have been together a long time but the fault lines in their relationship are getting ever more fragile.
Ingrid sees life through the focus of her work as an agency carer and climate change activist, whilst Stewart is a back bench MP. His perspectives are based on political pragmatism, hers on a sense of urgency and the belief that change must begin with each individual.
Breeding Grounds explores the human response to sustainability, world population and the moral dilemmas that are now facing each and every one of us in our daily lives. And to which we have to find our own accommodating solutions in the face of what seems to many to be a state of political inertia.
Journeymen Theatre are a West Midlands-based Human Rights theatre company. We tour extensively throughout the UK and are supported by Stourbridge Quakers and associated Quaker organisations.
Please check out our website to see the full range of our work and for performance dates. This play is available for booking from 1st May 2022.
This project has been commissioned by QCOP
(Quaker Concern Over Population)
Back Door Parole
(formerly called Lock Down)
Ron is an elderly lifer and Kathy is new to prison chaplaincy. It’s a strange bond they develop but important to both of them. Through the prism of life inside, Kathy is forced to go on a journey of discovery and Ron is her guide.
Back Door Parole explores the hidden plight of the elderly and infirm inside UK’s jails and asks some big questions about how the system is coping with this ever increasing problem. As Ron is fond of saying ‘There is no system. That is the system.’
Back Door Parole is a prison term for those inmates who will never be released from incarceration. Their only way out will be "back door parole" slang for death.
The play explores the complexities of the UK penal system and how this impacts upon both inmates and those who work within it. In particular, it exposes the pressures and stresses caused by the increasing number of elderly men who will see out their days in prison cells.
There is no charge for performance but we welcome donations for organisations working closely with long term prisonners in the UK. We can perform this play in almost any space, (including inside prisons). We are emtirley self sufficent, all we need is a 13 amp electrical supply.
Age range: 17+ Duration: Approximately 70 minutes
Back Door Parole has been commissioned by Positive Justice Gloucestershire
The Bundle
IThe Bundle, commissioned by QARN (Quaker Asylum Seekers and Refugee network) tells the true story of a woman fleeing domestic violence and servitude in Chechyna, endorsed by the state there, coupled with the ‘hostile environment’ being created in the UK by our government.
See our Current Productions page for more info.
Duration:- 1 hour
Age suitability:- 16+
Lover of Souls
A dramatic evocation of the life of Elizabeth Hooton.
What led a 17th century woman in her fifties to leave a comfortable home in a remote East Midlands village, to become a travelling Quaker minister, enduring persecution and prison, confronting Cromwell and Charles II, making the dangerous Atlantic crossing several times and ending her days in Jamaica?
Hooton and the other early Quakers experienced the English Civil war and its aftermath in all its viciousness; indeed, in terms of suffering and loss the English Civil War had a destructive impact greater than either of the two world wars of the Twentieth Century. Out of this crucible of war there emerged what historians usually call ‘The Protestant Sects’. Ranters, Seekers, Baptists, Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchists and, of course, Quakers.
Looking at Hooton’s life and suffering as a Quaker casts a clear light into the tangled skein of seventeenth century religious belief, when the most important issue facing men and women was that of individual salvation. She and the early Quakers turned this issue on its head by advocating and embracing a radical, practical and socialist theology. As the Quaker Epistle for 2021, says: ‘Our Quaker forebears were wild about their faith. And they challenged the establishment...Is it time to rewild our Quakerism? Hooton’s answer would be a resounding ‘Yea’.
Devised, written and performed by Lynn Morris, the show is based closely on Elizabeth Hooton’s own writings and those of her contemporaries.
Duration:- 55minutes
Age Sutability:- 17+