Usually, audiences are positioned to empathise or hate a character, to view each one as their person and to view each world as completely separate from ours. Even Shakespeare’s plays, which did criticise human nature (ie, greed or legitimacy), had fantastical settings. Certainly, they were a deliberate literary choice which separates the audience from the characters. My play, via Brechtian techniques, does not do this. Both the audience and the actors will experience the story together, immersing the audience as part of the set and preventing the actors from connecting with their characters.

Synopsis: The Tellers, whose role is to support the transition between the Land of the Living and the Afterlife, greet the Newcomer. They have detached from their previous identities and exist solely as a guide, usually helping new arrivals understand where they are and how to navigate life beyond death. However, this new arrival is more interested in who the Tellers were before death, so the Newcomer listens to four stories, all of which depict some aspect of capital punishment in England & Wales and the experiences that a criminal, reporter, average British citizen and a key figure in the abolitionist movement faced. While the past is important, the play also recognises that the Tellers’ lives have little impact on our world today. Capital punishment - its return - is our responsibility.