Dorsetborn and Theatre503 present
Fort
14 - 17 Jan 2025
Written by Tabitha Hayward (she/her)
Directed by Rohan Gotobed (he/him)
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1am. An Iron Age hillfort in North Dorset.
Away from dysfunctional families and small-town gossip, Viv and Daisy can be entirely themselves. With so much beyond their control, Fort is their stomping ground. Their escape. Until the ghost turns up.
Best friends for as long as they can remember, their bond has survived school bullies, witchcraft, jealousy and vengeful cows. But at the end of a summer when everything is changing, can it survive the ghost?
Originally drafted on a Royal Court Introductory Group, Fort was longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize 2022 and shortlisted (in an earlier draft) for the Theatre 503 International Playwriting Award. Most recently, it was shortlisted for the Masterclass Pitch Your Play Award, and pitched to industry professionals at The Other Palace theatre.
Dorsetborn are a queer and neurodivergent-led theatre company creating new work across Dorset and the South West. Their debut show, ‘Georgia and the Iceberg’, toured in 2023. Other projects include ‘PRIDE’, commissioned by the National Trust for Kingston Lacy, and ‘A Shipwreck Story’. They are an Associate Company of National Youth Theatre.
Running time: 65 minutes (no interval)
Age guidance: 14+
Content Warnings: This show contains themes that some audience members may find distressing. If this sounds like it could apply to you, you can view the content information by clicking the hyperlink.
Tabitha Hayward (she/her)
Tabitha (she/her) is a writer of plays, poems and stories, originally from North Dorset, currently based in London. Her plays have been performed at the Southwark Playhouse, the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, and the Black Cherry in Bournemouth. She was shortlisted for Masterclass Pitch Your Play Award in 2023 (with an extract from the play performed at The Other Palace in London) and the Theatre 503 International Playwriting Award 2020, and longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize 2022. She was selected to take part in a Royal Court Introductory Group in 2019, and has been shortlisted for development as a writer at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and at Bristol Old Vic. She is also a poet, and has been shortlisted for national and international poetry competitions.
Magic, mystery, growing pains… and a Dorset ghost - Tabitha Hayward Interview with Poole Lighthouse
Posted on 8 October 2024
The play begins at 1am where we find lifelong friends 15-year-old Viv and Daisy sitting on a hillfort in North Dorset waiting for a ghost.
“Daisy is adamant she has seen this ghost and now Viv wants to come and see for herself,” explains Tabitha.
“More broadly though, Fort is about friendship and growing up, particularly in a rural setting, and the tests of that friendship at a time in their lives when they’re starting to be pulled in slightly different directions.
“It’s about two teenagers navigating their futures with a bit of magic and folklore in the storytelling.”
Tabitha, who facilitated the Young Writers course at Lighthouse before handing over the reins to Fort director Rohan Gotobed, started writing the play on train journeys between Dorset and the Royal Court Theatre in London, where she was the only non-Londoner on a playwriting course.
“I wanted to write something which was really rooted in place and started to realise the things that were normal to me, that I had grown up with, like the Cheese Festival in Sturminster Newton, like hill forts, these are things that other people are not familiar with so there was something potentially interesting there.
“People always say to writers you should write what you know and I’d always gone completely in the other direction from that – what’s interesting about having had a nice childhood in the countryside? But actually, there is something really mysterious and curious about that.”
Read the full article
