“The purpose of playing is to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature. To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image and the age and body of the time his form and pressure.” — Hamlet by Shakespeare.

Theatre reflects our lives, our time and our place and we do it anywhere that we can shine a light in the darkness.

Artists teach us to look, to see and to hear. Seeing is everything, looking is everything and listening is the key.

As children, we’re taught how to read; we’re taught how to write. But it is music that teaches us to listen. When we don’t listen, we only hear the sound of our own voice.

Take a child. Newly born. When we want to settle a crying baby after feeding, changing and burping. What comes next? The lullaby. The soothing sound of music. The vibration of a voice that sings and makes a difference.

It is music that stops us in our tracks. “If music be the food of love – play on!” goes the opening line of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It is another’s words that clarify our thoughts when we cannot. At times of celebration or grief, we turn to poets and music.

Where music makes us pause, it is theatre that spurs us to action. Politics in theatre doesn’t have to be bleak or dystopian. The most effective political act is in comedy. Humour is more powerful and more effective. To provoke laughter, the performer and the audience need to recognise, understand and agree – in an instant. The laughter confirms it. In a heartbeat we realise we’re in this together. We are not the only one who understands this. We are a community.

Fundamentally, our job in theatre is to show the audience they’re not alone.

We show truth in full light. Literally. Laughter brings change and that is the political act. Being changed by what we see.

Art and artists enlarge our lives.

“He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion”. — The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.