Celebrating Student, Staff and Alumni Initiatives
Theatre Practice Students and Alumni Make Supplies and Scrubs for NHS Frontline Workers

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, Central’s staff, students and alumni have spearheaded a number of initiatives to make a difference.

These are just a selection of the many projects that connect local communities affected by isolation, that operate at the intersection of the arts and healthcare, that support our amazing NHS and that spark creativity in lockdown.

To tell us about your project or to share stories and tips on how to adapt your practice and look after yourself and your community during these challenging circumstances, please get in touch.

Please also visit our alumni pages, where we’re sharing key messages of support and encouragement that we’ve been receiving from our graduates around the world.

And don’t forget to keep an eye on our website and social media feeds where you can find the latest information about all the student work taking place during the Summer 2020 term, including: online play rehearsals and film projects, the Brink Festival, the online Theatre Practice Exhibition, the MA/ MFA Scenography Exhibition, our digital collaborative outreach projects and so much more.

Supporting our NHS

  • Central’s 2nd and 3rd year BA (Hons) Theatre Practice students have been working together with alumni to help in the fight against COVID-19 by creating bags, headbands, nurses’ uniforms and hospital scrubs for frontline NHS workers.
  • Central’s MA Applied Theatre students have responded to the lockdown by creating an immersive Radio Drama together with Acute Dialysis Ward Patients on Auchi Ward at Hammersmith Hospital, as a part of the School’s ongoing partnership with the Imperial Hospital NHS Trust.
  • Alumna Sarah Elghady has set up GogglesforDocsUK, an initiative to get used and new ski goggles into the hands of NHS workers who are treating infected patients without access to adequate eye protection. 
  • Alumnus Jono Kenyon, together with fellow lighting designer Katharine Williams, has established People Powered – a collective of freelancers from across the entertainment and live event industries who have come together to help the NHS and other frontline services.  Honing their existing skills, the team has assisted with providing communications tools, construction of needed structures including staff spaces, and the provision of food banks and staff shops at NHS Hospitals.  
  • Current students Sophie Munden and Elana Shyong have established the Camden Positivity Project.  Alongside the creation of an NHS Video Thank You Letter which allows everyone in the Borough of Camden (where Central is located) to send a message of thanks to NHS staff, a dedicated Facebook page has been created to highlight positive initiatives and actions emerging as a result of the crisis.  
  • Alumna Danusia Samal has taken part in #NHSLove, an initiative of Tamsha Theatre to boost the morale of frontline NHS staff during the pandemic; for the project, she performed an extract from Fatal Light by Chloe Moss.  

“I set up Goggles For Docs UK on 6 April, and in all honesty probably couldn’t have done this without the skills I learnt from my Creative Producing Masters at Central where, amongst many other skills, I learnt how to set up and design a website as well as the value of partnership.  I set up Goggles for Docs in partnership with Med Supply Drive UK, to ensure all donations are channelled to where they can have the biggest impact and distributed to those who are most in need. Given this lack of PPE is unfortunately still very much apparent, particularly in care homes, we are continuing to try and be resourceful to help protect our healthcare professionals by any means possible.  

So if you have an old pair of ski or bike goggles with clear lenses at the back of a cupboard serving no current purpose, I urge you to please consider donating these, for more information please go to the Goggles For Docs UK website.  Your donation could help save lives.” – Central alumna Sarah Elghady

Connecting our Communities

  • Working under the supervision of Dr Nicola Abraham, students from the MA Applied Theatre and Drama, Applied Theatre and Education courses have developed dementia friendly resource packs filled with drama, storytelling and gentle creative games. These have been sent out to the School’s network of partnerships for use in care homes and hospitals in order to support older adults living in isolation. Work is being distributed throughout the UK as well as internationally. International students who have managed to travel back to their home countries are translating all of these resources and distributing them in their local communities.
  • Dr Selina Busby and MA Applied Theatre students from Central are working alongside London-based Company Three, Nick Hern Books, the National Association of Youth Theatres, Scottish Youth Theatre, Youth Arts Network Cymru and the Unicorn Theatre on the Coronavirus Time Capsule.  Together with hundreds of groups of teenagers from more than 16 countries, the project provides the teenagers with free resources, support, connection and a space to be creative whilst capturing week-by-week video records of the pandemic through the eye of teenagers around the world.
  • Central Alumna and PhD candidate Kate Scarlett Duffy, together with alumnus Pavlos Christodoulou and refugee theatre company Phosphoros Theatre, have created a series of video performances in response to living in lockdown.  More online content from Phosphoros will be coming in June and again in the Autumn.
  • Fevered Sleep, with Central’s Professor David Harradine, works to find ways to listen to young people and amplify their voices.  In the midst of the Coronavirus crisis, they have handed over their website and regularly curated ‘current question‘ content to young people and are asking them what they are thinking, feeling and doing in lockdown: 
  • Numerous Central alumni have been involved in virtual projects to get people moving together, including: Shelley Maxwell’s curated video of participants from across the globe dancing during lockdown and featuring fellow alumni Ingrid MackinnonPolly Bennett and Christina Fulcher, as well as Kate Sagovsky’s Movement 365 project and free movement and yoga classes offered by Jess Amery.

But everything has an ending shines a light on how refugee communities are experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to show how life under lockdown has additional dimensions of precarity for those under immigration control. As ever, Phosphoros Theatre work to ensure refugee perspectives are included and listened to, and the refugee performers in the video series were particularly passionate about making visible some of the hidden struggles faced by destitute asylum seekers.” – Central alumna and current PhD candidate Kate Scarlett Duffy

Sharing Knowledge

  • Central academics including Dr Nicola Abraham and Jessica Bowles have spoken at lunchtime socials for The Culture Capital Exchange, discussing knowledge sharing and exchange in challenging times.
  • Central’s MA Applied Theatre students, together with Dr Selina Busby, have been involved in a unique, global mental health and wellbeing project: the International Applied Theatre project includes participants form Universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, Togo, United States and Australia. Working in cross-country groups, and in response to the pandemic, the students create and share their work virtually.

Adapting Practice

  • Alumni have led – or taken part in – a number of digital festivals during lockdown.  These have included Riz Ahmed’s The Long Lockdown Festival, IsolationFest featuring performance from alumna Tracy Caine aka Pixie StyxMaria Cuervo and current MFA Creative Producing student Jose Reyes’ Virtual Variety Fest, and Khai Ramli’s Monologues From My Bedroom.
  • The Theatre Times International Online Theatre Festival, with support from Central and Digital Theatre Plus, has been curated by a team of co-artistic directors including Central PhD candidates Alma Prelec and Gabriel Vivas-Martinez with executive direction from Professor Maria Delgado.  The festival includes the ‘Home Makers’ project of Dr Ella Parry-Davies
  • Staff and Alumni work has also been showcased in new ways thanks to digital technology, including: the BBC’S Big Night In featuring Dawn French and Catherine Tate; the BBC’s television revivial of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues with the London Theatre Company featuring alumni Martin Freeman and Kristin Scott Thomas and with direction from Jonathan Kent; the National Theatre at Home productions of Twelfth Night, starring Olivier Chris and Ammar Duffus with Company Voice Work from alumna Jeannette Nelson, and Anthony and Cleopatra with Fisayo Akinade; and Ayse Tashkiran’s movement direction for the RSC’s Romeo and Juliet which was shown as a part of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine season.

Sparking Creativity 

  • 33 Arias, an online installation in response to the global pandemic, and with material created by 33 MA Music Theatre alumni and others, was commissioned by Rafael Ortega and the Museo Amparo, Mexico, and created by Professor Paul Barker.
  • Papatango Theatre Company, a theatre company co-led by alumnus Chris Foxon, presented the Isolated But Open Voices From Across the Shutdown project; a series of video monologues from award winning playwrights and featuring work from fellow alumni Martha Watson Allpress and Danusia Samal.
  • Developed during her time as a student on the MFA Advanced Theatre Practice Course, alumna Ally Poole’s headphone theatre installation will play at the Fringe Arts Bath alongside the CoLab Sound exhibit, a new collaborative sound installation by the festival artists.
  • Danusia Samal has created the Virtual Collaborators project featuring over 50 actors, writers and directors producing rapid-response short films about how all of our lives have been changed by the COVID-19 lockdown.
  • Dr Amanda Stuart Fisher and Dr Farokh Soltani, together with Oldham Theatre Workshop and Drama, Applied Theatre and Education students at Central, are creating a virtual playwriting resource for young people engaged with Little Fish Theatre Company.

“When our industry shut down I, like many others, felt the fear of having nothing to look forward to - ‘Can theatres open again? Can films be made again?’. I was worried about friends and colleagues. Lots and lots of people from different walks of life are suffering a lot. Was there anything positive that could be built from this? The project started as a way of making people feel less isolated. It’s built into something extremely hopeful. People are resourceful, resilient, and generous.” - Central alumna Danusia Samal

Congratulations to all of the students, staff and alumni who are involved in these - and so many more - initiatives.  

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