When We Were Queens by Peter Straughan

Directed by Wils Wilson

Barrow Youth Theatre was chosen from amateur companies all over the Northern Region to take part in Future Tense, a festival of 5 new plays written especially for non-professional groups by 5 exciting playwrights from the region.

When we Were Queens is based upon three facts.

Firstly, as it was illegal for women to act on the Elizabethan  stage, the female roles in Shakespeare’s plays were originally   played by companies of boy actors.

Secondly, the boys were often struggling with poverty and  were forced into the life of rent boys.

Thirdly - with very few exceptions - they remain to this day  unknown, their names unrecorded in any history of the English  stage.

When We Were Queens explores the lives of some of these boy actors as their struggle to survive leads them into an underworld of drugs, prostitution and murder.

The play opens in the wings of The Globe Theatre during a performance of Hamlet . . .

Performed at forum twenty eight in January 1999 and at Live Theatre, Newcastle in April 1999