Episode 68. Bridget Foreman: The Devising of Plays and Community Theatre

SYNOPSIS

Childhood stage experience in her home city of Oxford and then with the National Youth Theatre presaged a career in the theatre for Bridget Foreman. In 1992, she joined the Riding Lights theatre company, initially as an actor, before helping to devise its Roughshod brand of grassroots community theatre. Collaborating with its director, Paul Burbridge and others, Bridget pioneered a method of devising theatre through group brainstorming interspersed with intensive historical research.

Following the trajectory of Bridget’s career, the episode follows the growth in scale of the productions that she has helped to devise. A partnership with the Theatre Royal York, the National Railway Museum and Pilot Theatre led to In Fog and Falling Snow (2015), which charts the rise and fall of the disgraced Railway King, George Hudson.

The episode concludes with a discussion of Bridget’s 2025 play, His Last Report, co-written with Misha Duncan-Barry about the York chocolate maker and social investigator, Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree. With its involvement of local people in making costumes, acting, dancing and singing His Last Report exemplifies her belief in the transformative effect of participating in community theatre.

GUESTS

Dr Bridget Foreman is Associate Director of the Riding Lights theatre company and Senior Lecturer in Playwriting at the University of York. Author of more than 20 plays, her work has been presented across the UK and internationally. Writing credits include A Dangerous Game, Clay Fever, The Bare Bones, Everything is Possible: the York Suffragettes and In Fog and Falling Snow (co-written with Mike Kenny).

Simon’s interview with Dr Bridget Foreman was recorded at the Riding Lights theatre, Lower Friargate, York on 22 May 2025.