Dorsetborn’s latest production to tour ahead of London premiere

A NEW play set around an Iron Age Dorset hillfort is touring the county ahead of its London premiere.

Fort is described as an “evocative and compelling new play” by Dorsetborn, an associate company of National Youth Theatre and a queer and neurodivergent-led theatre company.

The show will follow two 15-year-old best friends, Viv and Daisy, who wait for a ghost.

Dorsetborn describe the production: “Away from dysfunctional families and small-town gossip, up on Fort, Viv and Daisy can be entirely themselves.

“With so much beyond their control, Fort is their stomping ground.

“Their escape.

“Until the ghost turns up.”

Writer, Tabitha Hayward, began working on Fort while on train journeys between Dorset and the Royal Curt Theatre in London.

Tabitha said she was the only student that was not from London on the playwriting course.

“Everyone says ‘write what you know’, and I’d always thought that was way too boring for me,” said Tabitha.

“Until I realised no one else had grown up in a town with a Cheese Festival, or knew what a hillfort was, and that all the stuff which I’d found boring and frustrating as a kid was actually hilarious and brilliant and kind of moving.”

The production has been funded Arts Council England and is Dorsetborn’s latest show following Georgia and the Iceberg and Pride in 2023.

Director, Rohan Gotobed, said: “This play deserves to be seen, to be heard, to be experienced.

“It’s a genuine South West success story; having been developed through Poole Lighthouse’s Sanctuary Programme, Taunton Brewhouse’s Summer School, and The Script’s the Thing Festival in Dorchester, Fort shows what can be achieved by local artists in collaboration with supportive organisations.

“We can’t wait for audiences to meet Viv and Daisy.”

Fort will begin its tour at the Allendale Centre in Wimborne on November 10 before continuing across Dorchester, Weymouth, Poole, Bournemouth, Cranborne and Southampton.

A full list of shows and dates can be found on the production’s social media channels, @dorset_born and on https://linktr.ee/dorsetborn.