The Leeds Playhouse and Belgrade Coventry co-production, presented in association with Rose Theatre, brings William Golding’s 1954 classic story into the 21st century, reflecting the world we live in now while remaining faithful to his fascinating, thought-provoking central premise.
What would a group of schoolchildren do if they were left to their own devices? How would they survive?
In the original novel and older film and stage versions of the story, the young castaways were usually a group of privileged white boys. In her retelling, however, Amy Leach has chosen to reflect the world we live in now – and the audiences who will fill the auditoriums in Leeds and on tour.
“We’ve really considered the diversity of our cast, thinking about all those young people – many of whom will be studying the book at school – who will be coming to see the play and will relish seeing themselves reflected in the world of the story,” said Amy Leach, Deputy Artistic Director at Leeds Playhouse. “It’s forced us to look again at the story; to question it through a contemporary lens. This isn’t just something that’s happened in the past; it’s something that’s still happening now and will continue to happen. We can choose how we live our lives, and Lord of the Flies clearly shows us the consequences of those choices.”
But creating the story for the stage is not just about people, it’s about the landscape itself – the eerie island that changes and shifts throughout the play to reflect the mood of its inhabitants.
“Staging a play is a very different medium to writing a novel,” Amy continued. “A novel comes alive in our minds, while a play is a living, breathing, 3D experience with real humans connecting with a real audience. Inevitably, we’ve had to make some changes to the geography of the island. We can’t push giant boulders off great heights in the theatre so there are some practical choices that have had to be made. But there is a sense of abstract fear in the book that we can retain and enhance on stage, building this sense of the beast – the Lord of the Flies – as a conceptual as well as a very real threat.”
Lord of the Flies is at Leeds Playhouse from 21 March to 8th April.
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