When This Is Over - A note from Ned

A note from Ned about the cancellation of When This Is Over performances at the Unicorn Theatre.

There is a moment in the making of any play with young people when the cast start to own their words onstage. When it’s no longer about remembering lines, but about enjoying them – living them, almost.

It’s a beautiful thing – particularly when the words are their own, gathered in workshops over a whole year and slowly, painstakingly turned into a script.

We’d just reached that moment on Saturday.

We were running some scenes at the Unicorn and for the first time I could see the whole company playing on stage, having a blast. They'd all put on their costumes for the first time  and they were standing six inches taller. Believing in their words and their capacity to be brilliant in front of an audience. Confident that their stories mattered.

It’s not been an easy process, with Covid restrictions throughout, the constant uncertainty, an exhausting summer that meant I was really slow getting the final draft together. 

I’ve never worked so collaboratively with a cast. I’ve never known a group so committed to their words, to the play that we had made together. 

They were so excited.

As they ran the scenes on Saturday I thought, “this is going to be really good”. And then I thought "I think we might actually get this show on stage". 

The next day one of the cast tested positive. 

I tested positive.

Then another cast member today.

We always said that the safety of our young people, the wider team and our audience would come first, so we knew straight away what we had to do. 

It's devastating to cancel a show. But it's particularly tough when it involves young people. 

It's not a job for them. They don't have something to move on to. It's a part of their lives - something they've poured so much heart and time into. 

They've lost the opportunity for the kind of growth that only happens when you finish a project like this. When you prove to your parents that all this time spent mucking around in a rehearsal room was worth something. When you feel proud.

It is these opportunities that the pandemic has decimated for young people. We grow the most when we do big, brave things, most often in the company of others.

Most of all, we've lost the chance to hear from them – at a time when it's so important that we do.

For all these reasons, it’s now a priority for us to get the show back on, when we can, in the future. It’s too good and too important not to.

When we first conceived the show, we called it When This Is Over, because we thought we might perform it at a time when it was. For the reasons we all know, that’s clearly not the case right now.

I can’t wait to get it back on stage, though I know it will be a while – and that it will be a different play by then. Teenagers change so quickly that you can never just remount a play. It has to change with them. It breaks my heart that we'll never see this version of them, as they are now, on stage.

We will make it again. The cast will put on their costumes and grow (another) six inches. 

We will get our brilliant team together – Sadeysa Greenaway Bailey, who has co-created the show with us and been a constant source of inspiration and joy. Our beautiful sound and lighting design by Nicola T. Chang and Jai Morjaria; the brilliant production team of Adam Burns, Lavina Serban and Angie Peña-Arenas. Our peerless producer Penny Babakhani. 

I get some hope from the fact there are more than forty other youth theatres and schools groups, all making their own version of the play right now – based on a blueprint we shared whilst making ours. What a beautiful thought that is - all those young people telling their stories.

I hope that when we finally get to make our version of the play, things will be different – with Covid, with the world. For all of us, but particularly our young people.

They deserve it, so much. 

Ned

Read the note from the cast here.

If you had booked tickets for the show then you should have received an email today from the Unicorn box office. If you haven't then please contact the box office team on boxoffice@unicorntheatre.com or 020 7645 0560.