Pilot Theatre’s Esther Richardson talks about their new stage production of A Song for Ella Grey

Photo: Olivia Brabbs

Pilot Theatre have become of the UK’s leading companies making challenging work for younger audiences, and after their success with classic teen yarn Noughts & Crosses their latest production is an adaptation of David Almond’s A Song For Ella Grey

This adaptation by Zoe Copper is a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus myth focusing on Claire and her best friend Ella Grey, who are just ordinary kids with everyday hopes and fears. They and their friends fall in and out of love, but one day a musician called Orpheus appears on the beach. He entrances them all, and particularly Ella, but where has Orpheus come from and what path will Ella take as she comes of age?

The cast will feature actress, writer and to her 729.1k followers Tik Tok performer Grace Long as Ella Grey, Beth Crame as Angeline and Jonathan Iceton as Jay and RSC actor Olivia Onyehara as Claire. A Song For Ella Grey is directed by Pilot’s Artistic Director Esther Richardson, and our Features Editor Paul Clarke caught up with her to find out how a reworking of an ancient myth can connect with Gen Z.

Esther, tell us more about this new stage version of a best-selling novel aimed at young adults?

A Song For Ella Grey is a contemporary version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and it’s set in Newcastle and Northumberland. It is a powerful story of love and loss told from the perspective of a group of young people.

Was it a deliberate choice to look at David Almond for your next piece?

Absolutely. David is one of the foremost authors for children and young people and he just has this magic. He has this belief in the magic, in the mystical, in the spiritual aspects of our existence, which makes him a perfect author for children and young people because he has always kept alive the richness of his imagination.

You had a big hit touring your adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses but that is in many ways more of a classic good v evil tale. How do you think your audience will react to a reworking of an ancient myth albeit in a modern setting?

It’s very different, there’s no getting around it, both are ambitious but in different ways. They’re both also based on timeless stories and timeless myths. So in Noughts and Crosses Malorie has been very open about that it’s a version of Romeo and Juliet. It’s also a story of love and loss, but it’s set in a dystopian world which is at a remove from ours in order that we understand systemic racism. And David’s piece, in contrast, is set in some ways closer to the real world of real teenagers.

How so?

It explores the extraordinary, the magic and in a way the awesome aspects of being on the cusp. You know, being aged 17, when all the possibilities of your humanity, and where you might go, are at their fullest potential.

And there are some big themes in David’s text that Zoe has kept in her adaptation.

This story is about how we have to come to terms in any case with our mortality, with the inevitability of our own death. Which is strangely something that as teenagers we think about a lot, we start to become more aware of our mortality more than when we were small children, and we want to explore big emotions. So this piece is about that universal coming of age experience of becoming an adult basically. Becoming an adult means you can’t be a kid anymore in some senses, and we all go through that portal, every human being does. So I think it’s tapping more into what it means to fall in love, what it means to lose the love of your life and what it means to grow up.

And there seems to me a more universal theme as many of the young people coming to this show have lived through the pandemic and that collective national trauma has really impacted on them as they grew up.

That’s exactly why I wanted to do this show now because I felt that above all the stories that we might have told now it felt the right time to tell this. I started to look at things like the data for just the mental health of young people at the moment. On the NHS website it’s really clear, people can argue in Parliament about this, but it’s really clear that there’s an increase in mental health issues for young people. It’s gone up since 2019, and it was already on the increase, and it has increased reasonably dramatically since.

Photo: Olivia Brabbs

So the simple act of sitting in a theatre with others who have been through a life altering national crisis watching this play could become part of a healing process for some people.

Sometimes theatre just needs to be a space for us to explore our humanity, to process the things that we’ve gone through collectively. That idea of theatre being a secular church in that sense is an important part of its role. I just felt that at this there’s been no meaningful, meaningful, deep reflection on what we have all just lived through which was absolutely extraordinary. I would say that there’s not been a deep enough exploration of that in theatre and I do think one of the potent things about this particular story is through a metaphor, through a gorgeous mythic story, it allows us to look at that.

So hopefully all those young people who battled through social distancing and that collective trauma at the same time will walk away from A Song For Ella Grey knowing that their experiences are being heard and understood.

I think all our work is about trying to help young people to feel less alone and all our work is about trying to create belonging. Absolutely it’s for us to understand and empathise with experiences that are not our own sometimes, but that also massively affect us.

Tour dates:

1st – 15th February -Northern Stage, Newcastle

Box Office: 0191 2305151 // https://www.northernstage.co.uk/

20th – 24th February – York Theatre Royal

Box Office: 01904 623568 www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

27th February – 2nd March Theatre Peckham

Box Office: 020 7708 5401/ https://www.theatrepeckham.co.uk/

5th – 9th March – Hull Truck Theatre

Box Office: 01482 323638/ https://www.hulltruck.co.uk/

13th – 16th March – Liverpool Playhouse

Box Office: 0151 708 3700 https://www.everymanplayhouse.com

19th – 23rd March – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford