Wed 17 - Sat 20 July 2024, Park Theatre

This is a play about the beautiful, messy and joyful journey through teenagehood.

It’s about memory, joy and dreams for the future. It’s about beaches and GCSEs. It’s about what it’s like to be told to grow up, but never being given the space to do that.  

Join eight teenagers as they discover themselves and the world together. 

Grow Up is co-created with and performed by the company of thirteen- to sixteen-year-olds from Islington, drawing upon their life experiences. 

Company Three returns to the Park Theatre with Grow Up, written and directed by Amber Ruby and created as part of the Grow Up Exchange, a collaboration between Beyond Face, Company Three, Mortal Fools and Prime Theatre.   

Created and performed by Basiru Jammeh, Hattie McCaughey, Ilia Aristovich, Isaiah Asomani, Mylo Montefiori-Opoku, Renata Qorri, Shayma Zourdani, and Shiloh Basilua. 

Created with Adam Khenchelaoui, Inaaya Ali, Jasmin Kordofan Gadalla Jaily, Kadeasha Noel, Maryam Belaoud, Menabe Hailemariam, Suraya Hall, Waad Ahmed, and Zackiah Umah-Allen. 

Created by Amber Ruby and the company

Writer/Director Amber Ruby (She/They) 
Set and Costume Designer Rūta Irbīte (She/Her) 
Lighting Designer Abi Turner (They/Them) 
Sound Designer Duramaney Kamara (He/Him) 
Dramaturg Abi Zakarian (She/Her) 
Producer Gabi Spiro (She/Her) 
Assistant Director Pia Richards (They/Them)
Lead Facilitator in rehearsal, Assistant Director in creation Anyebe Godwin (He/Him) 
Project Assistant cover Alphonso Brown (He/Him) 
Stage Manager Maja Lach (She/Her) 
Production Manager Corey Bovell (He/Him) 
Access Consultant Touretteshero  

Isaiah’s story.

Grow Up is an emotional, wild story about growing up.

In the early stages of creating the play, my role as a co-creator and an actor was equally as large as the rest of the cast. I offered suggestions for scenes, played around with them and helped push the limits.

My character is myself. Who else would I want to be! Isaiah. He’s kind, energetic, excitable and eager for the future, and reminiscences about the past. His journey throughout the play is somewhat about change as you grow up - not being okay with it at first, at the beginning, and then finally, as the play goes on, I begin to want the change, finding out more things about myself, and finding excitement about what the future awaits.

I've enjoyed every part of Grow Up from beginning to now, but so far the most enjoyable part was performing the actual scenes and having fun playing them out. I also enjoy just simply hanging out with the rest of the cast, getting closer and making friends.

I've learned throughout the process many things that will help me in the future, not only acting but in life too, especially as I've had issues with acting or confidence and being part of Grow Up chases them away.

We're doing Relaxed Performances as part of Grow Up to make the play as accessible as possible to people of all differences. When I was told that Grow Up was going to be having Relaxed Performances. I was extremely excited. As a neurodivergent cast member, diagnosed with ASD and ADHD, this choice made me very proud and very excited.

Photography by Alicia Clarke.

The Grow Up story.

We created Grow Up in collaboration with three other youth theatres across the country as part of the first ever play Exchange programme.

Grow Up started life in 2021 as part of our annual Assembly festival, when we share first drafts of new ideas and work we’ve co-created with our young people. Back in 2021, the show was called Grow UP and was a collage of some young people’s experiences of growing up. It explored the memories, pressures and future worries of growing up in 2021. It was co-created by Amber Ruby and Philip Morris, and grew from the idea that young people are often told to “grow up” by adults, but are rarely given the space and power to do that.

We saw that it had potential and wanted it to evolve into a full-length, professional show. So we started redeveloping it again in 2023. 

We’ve previously developed shows in collaboration with other youth theatres, for example through our Coronavirus Time Capsule project, and thought that the themes we were exploring in Grow Up could be interesting to young people in other parts of the country too.  So we spoke to our friends at Beyond Face in Plymouth, Mortal Fools in Northumberland and Prime Theatre in Swindon, and they were on board to make their own versions of ‘Grow Up’ and to share art and ideas along the way.

We all went on a residential in Autumn 2023 with our groups – that’s 30 young people, travelling for a total of 1490 miles, to meet for a weekend and make work together.  

Company Three’s Grow Up group then spent a week together in February half term 2024 at the Park Theatre. We worked with our brilliant Set and Costume Designer Rūta Irbīte, Lighting Designer Abi Turner, Sound Designer Duramaney Kamara and a few others, and brought lighting, costume, fabrics and props into the space to stretch the ideas of the play even further. We shared the work for feedback with some friends and family.  

We started thinking about how we could make our performances of Grow Up more accessible for audiences, and worked with Touretteshero to help us put on a full run of relaxed performances. We also connected with some previous Company Three members, who created and performed their own post-show performance, over a decade after making the show Fifteen with us.

We went into rehearsals in early June 2024 and shared our version of Grow Up at the Park Theatre from 17th - 20th July 2024.

Photography by Jake Monib.