Nottingham Playhouse associate company Fifth Word is to tour All the Little Lights, Jane Upton’s work which led her to become joint winner of the 2016 George Devine Award for most promising playwright.
The play was written with support from the charity Safe and Sound and premièred at Nottingham Playhouse in autumn 2015 before going on a short tour. The cast and creative team will reunite for a UK tour which will take in 14 venues.
All the Little Lights tells the story of three girls who slip through the cracks in society as they desperately search for friendship, family and themselves. It is a “hugely relevant exploration of the dangers of child sexual exploitation and what can happen when society looks the other way”.
Fifth Word’s artistic director Laura Ford said, “we’ve been developing this play with Jane for more than two years to get it to this point and we’re immensely proud of what it’s achieved so far.
“We’re thrilled to be embarking on a national tour and taking this piece to the wider audience it deserves. All the Little Lights tells an incredibly powerful story about the exploitation of young girls who can too easily remain invisible to us, and we need to talk about it and develop our understanding of how this is still happening.”
The cast comprises Esther-Grace Button, Sarah Hoare and Tessie Orange-Turner. Laura Ford directs. Angharad Jones is associate director, designer is Max Dorey, lighting designer Alexandra Stafford and sound designer Max Pappenheim.
All the Little Lights, which has been nominated for best play at the 2016 Writers’ Guild Awards, will return to the Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse from 7 until 11 February. It then tours to Cast in Doncaster, Theatre Royal Wakefield, Birmingham REP, Ffwrnes Theatre in Llanelli, Mercury Theatre in Colchester, Hull Truck Theatre, Quarry Theatre in Bedford, Tron Theatre in Glasgow, Oxford Playhouse, Stamford Arts Centre, Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Unity Theatre, Liverpool. A London run is planned for later in 2017.