Details

Award winning writer Neil Duffield plays with our understanding of traditional storytelling in this fantasy tale of Demons, love and smart-phones. Young couple Erika and Lendal must outwit the evil Queen of the Otherworld or risk falling under her spell forever. Lost in a timeless world of magic and gaming, will our brave heroine be able to save Lendal and bring him back to reality. Twice Upon a Time is a play by children's writer Neil Duffield, who took inspiration from the relationship and interaction between the real and fantasy worlds in which we live, to varied extents, and its blurred lines. The story is told in one play with two acts, performed by two different groups. One half of the group directed by York Theatre Royal's Youth Theatre Director, Kate Plumb and the other half by Education & Young Actors Associate, Julian Ollive. The acts are conjoined, interconnected and tell the story of a boy and a girl longing to be together. The love story is divided into three spheres of time: York in the distant past, the present and the future. The play explores how we exist, whether conscious or not in different worlds and realities. These worlds can be self-made through immersion into such activities as on-line gaming or constructed by our unconscious such as in the world of dreams, which often seem all too real. The lines of reality in the play for protagonist Lendal are blurred indeed - does his lover Erika exist or is she a reality of his dreams? The conflict between reality and fantasy is at the core of the play.

Creatives/Company

Author: Neil Duffield
Presented by: York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre