1 - 5 November 2022, The Yard Theatre
This is a play about hope and the future.
It’s about whether it’s possible to have hope when everything is moving so fast. When everything is chaos.
It’s about the moments in your life when you realise how complex the world is. How scary it is. How little control you have - even though for your entire life everyone’s been telling you that it’s all down to you.
It’s about all the things we tell children about the future. And all the things that we don’t.
Company Three return to the Yard with this deeply personal show, forged during the pandemic by a company of teenagers brought together by billions of chance events going right back to the beginning of time. Staged on a set made from repurposed scenery from other London shows, When This Is Over is a celebration of uncertainty, possibility and whether it's possible to go back to normal.
The play has been created iteratively alongside more than 50 other youth theatres across the UK, who have used Company Three’s When This Is Over Blueprint to stage their own versions of the play. It was named Community Project of the Year at the 2022 Stage Awards.
Tuesday 1 November 2022, 7:30pm
Wednesday 2 November 2022, 7:30pm
Thursday 3 November 2022, 7:30pm
Friday 4 November 2022, 7:30pm
Saturday 5 November 2022, 2:30pm
Yard Theatre Queen's Yard, London E9 5EN
Under one minute from Hackney Wick Overground.
Tickets from £12. Prices increase as the theatre fills – the earlier you book the cheaper it will be. Locals get 30% off all tickets with a free Yard Local Card – sign up online.
If you’re aged 26 and under you can get £5 tickets on the door to all performances that are not sold out with #NoEmptySeats.
Created and performed by Bailey Charalambous, Shilton Freeman, Mackenzie Gardiner, Allegresse Kabuya and Love Ọmọlọla
Created with Kezia Adewale, Shyhiem Hossain-Heath, Aaliyah Murrian and Arda Tunc
Created by Ned Glasier, Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and the company
Writer & Director Ned Glasier (he/him)
Designer Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey
Associate Director Amber Ruby (she/they)
Movement Nuna Sandy
Lighting Designer Abi Turner (they/them)
Composer & Sound Designer Ben McQuigg (he/him)
Production Manager Adam Burns (he/him)
Stage Manager Lavinia Serban (she/her)
Deputy Stage Manager Angie Peña Arenas
Poster Artwork Myah Jeffers
Rehearsal Photography Tom Harrison
Original Unicorn Theatre Production
Sound design Nicola T Chang
Lighting Designer Jai Morjaria
Dramaturg Nic Wass
Producer Penny Babakhani
A Company Three Production in association with The Unicorn Theatre, supported by The Yard Theatre
Rehearsal Gallery
The When This Is Over Story.
We have been developing the When This Is Over project since the summer of 2020.
Along the way we’ve collaborated with more than fifty other youth theatres and won Community Project of the Year Award at the Stage Awards. But we still haven’t performed the play …
When This Is Over began life as part of the Coronavirus Time Capsule, our online project that united more than 3,000 teenagers in 17 different countries during lockdown. It was the title of a video anticipating all the things that young people were looking forward to, and hoping for, at the end of the pandemic.
That summer the first lockdown finished and we ran our first in-person work since the beginning of the pandemic. In socially distanced rooms, with everyone sitting in marked up boxes on the floor to prevent them from being too close, we started to create new work. Love, one of the eventual WTIO cast members, wrote a eulogy for herself that imagined her life lived out in infinite parallel universes.
We used Love’s writing as a starting point for a new play. Inspired by our exchange with hundreds of youth theatres on the Time Capsule project, we opened up our process, working with an initial cohort of sixteen other youth theatres to develop the play.
Alongside these collaborations we worked with artists and campaigners like Inua Ellams and Letters to the Earth in ‘gatherings’, large online meetings of up to 100 young people, all collaborating digitally to make new work. Here are some of the pieces we created:
Eventually, we used our experience of this collaboration to create a blueprint that enabled fifty other youth theatres to develop their own version of When This Is Over. Everyone performed in the autumn of 2021. Except us. Because, as we all knew - it wasn’t over. Covid had come back with a vengeance and when three of us tested positive during technical rehearsals at the Unicorn Theatre in October 2021, we were forced to cancel.
Two weeks later we staged a rehearsed reading of the play at the National Youth Theatre, a chance at last to see the play run from beginning to end.
We are delighted now to be able to finally produce the show at the Yard Theatre in November 2022. Five of the original cast remain and they will carry two years of development, collaboration and growth into the final production. We can’t wait to see you there.
