Maps for Lost Lovers

Devised by the company

National Youth Theatre (1992)

Directed by Dean Byfield

Lighting by Nigel Edwards

A poem-performance charting the attempts of a group of young drifters to make sense of love and life, adapting and exploiting the lexicon of old films and songs along the way.

A film-set landscape – fake nature against a photomural backdrop – shifted from daytime technicolour to a nocturnal world of glowing constellations and white satin.

I had been working with a third age drama group and brought them in to collaborate with the youth theatre company. A flotilla of sails carried projected film of the older actors around the space before sailing out of the theatre and into the sunset.

“Dean Byfield’s production is beautifully designed by Laura Hopkins, it’s emotional territory mapped out visually…drawing as much from new dance, the pop video and performance art as from the classical theatre. The classical theatre can only be the richer for it.”

The Guardian

“Combines the accessibility of pop culture with an intellectual grit that marks the best of work in this field…multi-media theatre which is both very funny and very moving. A rare combination.”

Plays International