Pilot Theatre is a national and international touring company based in York, creating work for, by and with young people aged 11-25. Recent stage productions include: Run, Rebel; The Bone Sparrow; Northern Girls; and Noughts and Crosses, which was the Winner of Excellence in Touring at the UK Theatre Awards. Our stage productions typically focus on adaptations of Young Adult novels which feature teenage protagonists, encouraging young people to encounter, express, and interrogate big ideas that are relevant to their lives.
We are also innovators in digital arts and immersive technology, creating internationally-acclaimed Virtual Reality experiences and games, which can be presented in education settings, as well as community spaces.
The adaptation of Noughts and Crosses which Pilot commissioned has now become a GCSE Drama set-text with Eduqas.
Accompanying all our stage productions are free digital learning resources, which support the teaching of Drama, English and PSHE at KS3 and KS4 levels. These resources are highly regarded nationally, and also feature clips from our theatre productions to watch again with accompanying analysis - which is particularly useful for the Live Theatre component of the GCSE Drama curriculum. We offer CPD to teachers and educators to complement our learning resources, and to support the teaching of Drama.
For students, we offer creative workshops to accompany our stage productions in schools, colleges and universities, allowing young people to explore our play-texts and productions, develop performance skills for devising theatre, or examining themes and issues related to our stories. The content of our workshops is bespoke, (primarily focussed on Drama, theatre and creative writing), while also supporting creative wellbeing, literacy and personal development. We can also offer talks and discussions with cast members, and members of the Pilot team.
We also invite up to two local schools per year the opportunity to work on a free extended creative learning project with us, inspired by our productions and in collaboration with professional arts practitioners. Previous projects with schools have included: creating beatboxing music videos; writing poetry and monologues; presenting art exhibitions and installations; and developing theatre performances.
In addition, we also have special one-off projects in collaboration with education settings, and work in a bespoke way, beyond our regular programmes of work: such as creative wellbeing, and international encounters. We also regularly partner with other arts organisations in York and beyond. We are sometimes able to accommodate work experience and placements on an ad-hoc basis.
The voices of teachers and educators are embedded in our organisation through our LAB (Learning Advisory Board), a group of education professionals who support us in delivering our mission and improving our creative learning offers to secondary schools, colleges and universities.
Pilot is an Artsmark supporter, and follows Arts Council England’s Quality Principles for working with young people.
We continue to have some projects available on-demand, such as Monoliths, a VR experience about women and the northern landscape; The Archive, a computer games which promotes wellbeing; and The Railway King, an audio walk which explores the railway heritage of York.
