DON’T STRESS JESS
LEEDS PLAYHOUSE, ONLINE PIECE, 2020
In May 2020, Leeds Playhouse approached me with a project idea. Many Year 11s felt that their schools had simply abandoned them after their exams were cancelled due to Covid. The theatre wanted to create an online ‘School of 2020’ to support these young people and create a theatre piece with them.
In August 2020, after two months of sessions, we launched our online piece Don’t Stress Jess - an interactive, storytelling website, with all of the content, videos and plot ideas created by the young people.
Scroll through the images to see some moments from the piece.
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Written & Directed by Joe Gilmour & Company
Produced by Amy Lancelot & Alex Ferris for Leeds Playhouse
At the time, a lot of companies were doing ‘Zoom performances’ but I thought we could do something more exciting. Inspired by the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, I had the idea of creating an interactive storytelling website.
We started with the key ingredient of any story - our character, Jess, who was trying to find out how to be happy. Through the weekly online sessions, we crafted the plot, and the young people would leave with a creative task for next week - writing a diary entry, or recording a video in character as a YouTube guru, for example.
The online sessions became a regular, safe space for young people to connect and be creative together.
I was also really proud to be able to move my devising skills to an online rehearsal room, and create an unique piece of art with these young people at a very unusual time.