GW Theatre Company

A unique drama-based resource tackling anti-social behaviour, juvenile disturbance and inter-generational conflict

“A powerful example of talent and vivacity” The Guardian

GW Theatre Company present Acting Your Age, a specially developed boundary pushing approach to tackling youth crime, anti-social behaviour, juvenile disturbance and inter-generational conflict with young people and adults. This unique resource uses a piece of live theatre as a catalyst for a range of follow-up and developmental work.

In Acting Your Age, by Mike Harris, Stevie (14) and his gang make the life of an old couple miserable, hanging around noisily drinking outside their house. When his wife dies, the old man blames Stevie and kidnaps him. Meanwhile Stevie’s social worker mother comes back from abroad to find her ex-husband, a housing manager, unwittingly trying to get his own son asbo’d. Both stories inter-cut rapidly as the play moves towards its nail-biting climax, and in the process the audience is invited to address important questions about generational conflict, social responsibility, the causes of anti-social behaviour, and how to deal with it.

Performances are immediately followed by character ‘hot-seating’ and interactive work with the audience – all of which is facilitated by the company

Subsequent follow-up work will include a specially designed cross curriculum resource pack for teachers and workers, featuring an interactive DVD. Within this there will be models and strategies for a programme of further work that can be delivered by Police Officers, Youth Crime Specialists, Youth Offending Teams etc. This will include systems and exercises to assist in the full monitoring, assessment, evaluation and impact of the work. GW Theatre can offer training to maximise the impact of this pack and the work within it.

We are offering a model of good practice that will enable multi-agency partnerships to work together in tackling the common aim of reducing the incidences of youth crime and juvenile disturbance by challenging attitudes and behaviour and developing and promoting positive citizenship.

GW Theatre Company is one of the most successful theatre companies working with young people in the country. Over the last 19 years, working in partnership with a whole host of professional agencies and organisations, the company has produced 23 original productions covering such issues as illegal drug misuse, teenage drinking, teenage parenthood, community cohesion, domestic violence and car crime.


In an approach that combines theatrical verve and dash with passion, humour and social engagement GW Theatre have proven to even the hardest sceptics that live theatre is a very powerful educational tool for engaging both young and adult audiences. Proven successes include their play Joyride by Mike Harris, which has been proven by a University study* to have significantly reduced the incidence of car crime in the Manchester area.

*Evaluation of the “Joyriding Initiative” in Manchester schools to counter violent car-crime [Phil Harris and Barclay Jackson, Manchester Metropolitan University 1997]