24th March 2023
Innocent Creatures
Congratulations to our talented performers for an excellent production of Innocent Creatures at BHASVIC Elms Theatre this March.
Innocent Creatures by Leo Butler performed by BHASVIC Theatre Company and directed by Kim Begley. Soon, very soon, Big Ben will be underwater, surrounded by ice floes. Enid and Mia wait to be rescued from the rising floodwaters and taken to a Holiday Inn to be reprogrammed. In this world, robots are in charge and Mia and Enid must decide whether they too want to live forever or take their chances in the icy waters. Will they decide that Earth’s last sunset is worth hanging around for thousands of years to see? This is a sci-fi play set in the near and distant future, and features characters who are robots or part android. Within this context, the play features discussion of “gas chambers” and characters being “exterminated”, violence to an animal (which is revealed to be robotic), a character cutting open their wrists to reveal wires, and a character’s eyes being gouged out and replaced with implants.
Leo Butler is an award-winning playwright. His plays have been produced at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida, Birmingham Rep and Royal Shakespeare Company. He has written many plays about young people, including "Made Of Stone" and "Redundant" at the Royal Court and "Boy" at the Almeida. Other work includes "I’ll Be The Devil" for the RSC; and "Lucky Dog" and "Faces In The Crowd" at the Royal Court. For ten years, Leo Butler was Writers Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre and helped nurture a new generation of playwriting talent.
NT Connections: Every year, Connections commissions new plays for young people to perform. The programme brings together some of the UK’s most exciting writers with the theatre-makers of tomorrow.
