FLUTE THEATRE
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Mission Statement
Flute was set up in 2014. We are renowned for our innovative productions of Shakespeare including specialised shows for autistic individuals, refugees and those displaced by war. These productions use the award-winning Hunter Heartbeat Method. We perform internationally, adapting the language of our performances to the needs and ears of our audience.
About This Cause
In 2014, we created The Tempest For Autistic Individuals as a co-production with the RSC. This production performed at the South Bank Centre in 2015 and at the Orange Tree Theatre 2016. In 2017, Kelly Hunter directed it on Catalan at Teatre Lliure in Barcelona. Flute have continued to tour this production, performing with autistic individuals in the UK and internationally. In September 2023, Kelly Hunter travelled to Lima Peru to create a Peruvian version of the production in Spanish at Teatro La Plaza for the Peruvian autistic community. In 2017, Flute Theatre and Orange Tree Theatre created A Midsummer Night’s Dream For Autistic Individuals. This production returned to Orange Tree Theatre in 2018. In the UK Flute also delivered two runs of A Midsummer Night’s Dream For Autistic Individuals at the Bridge Theatre London in 2018 and 2019 and Chichester Festival Theatre in 2018. Flute have toured this production in translation to Romania, Spain and Catalunya. In 2024 we have revived the production to play alongside our new mainstage production of the Dream. In 2019 Flute Theatre created Pericles For Autistic Individuals in co-production with Riksteatern, Sweden, performing on tour in translation to Sweden, Poland and Romania before the pandemic. During the pandemic we adapted our productions to be accessible online for the autistic community, delivering over 950 online live adapted performances for one autistic individual at a time across four continents. Since 2021 Flute has performed and toured Pericles For Autistic Individuals partnered by our mainstage production of Pericles in a unique theatrical double wherein we offer two productions of this same play including our version for autistic individuals. Using this Double Pericles model we have performed extensively across the UK, in London, Brighton, Colchester, Devon, Sheffield, Stratford upon Avon and Oxford as well as performing internationally in translation in Russian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Serbian. The production has also become the basis for Flute’s project with Ukrainian refugees in collaboration with The Situational Centre in Sofia Bulgaria. Since 2014, Flute Theatre have created five mainstage adaptations of Shakespeare, all of which have toured the European Festival circuit extensively. 2015 Hamlet 2017 Twelfth Night 2022 Pericles 2023 The Tempest 2024 A. Midsummer Night’s Dream A parents view: Dear Kelly 26th June 2014 How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! Thank you for creating your magical isle, which produced transformative effects beyond what even Prospero would have imagined. Myself and my 14 year old son really enjoyed being able to share in the truly unique experience of your specially edited version of the Tempest. As the wonderful and unique children that took part in this performance demonstrated, the autistic spectrum is very wide and every individual with a diagnosis of autism requires a bespoke and individual response. My son has high functioning autism and this is for him very much an invisible disability. In many ways his autism is only a disability if it is a disability by which I mean if he finds the right job of work, the right, compassionate, understanding, group of people around him then there is nothing to stop him reaching his potential. So far my son has been blessed to have the support of a superb specialist education unit within a main stream school, specific health care, and occupational therapy not to mention understanding friends and family, all of which have allowed him to flourish. This support masks the true extent of the day to day challenges that he has in dealing with, what is to him, a very alien and confusing world. Your work with him to- day added to his development and understanding considerably. I find the art of supporting my son is to creatively enter his world and through this act of empathy find the conditions by which we can learn to fit in with his world view rather than expecting him to understand ours. I remember reading the views of one autistic man who explains the situation this way; “everyone else is a boat but I am bike. In the world of boats everyone expects you to act as a boat and when the boat is broken they will suggest sensible ways to fix boats. They give these solutions to me but I am not a broken boat, I am a bike.” I think you have very successfully tapped into the realisation that exceptional actors (such as the ones involved in today’s Company) have a skill which makes them particularly good at working with people with autism and that is the ability to fully imagine a world from an utterly different point of view – a heightened sense of empathy more highly tuned than the rest of us. The actors today, using their great imaginative and practical skills were able to haul their hulls out of the water in order to become bikes; the children in the show today instinctively understood this and were thus given the unprecedented opportunity to free wheel like the best multi geared trail bikes they are. I was deeply touched and moved today. The insights from my son were stunning – he found a fluency of voice and movement during the performance I have rarely seen in him before. He made interesting observations – “today was the first time I forgot myself and was just there” – he had a totally intuitive sense of the characters and meanings of the Tempest. He was seriously impressed with the actors’ ability to change who they were. Today was a phenomenal success. You are all involved in very important work which has the power to transform lives and unleash unrealised potential in the children you work with. Please pass on our personal thanks to all cast, crew and admin staff (who were super fab; sending the social stories and making personal phone calls). The RSC has always been a place of extraordinary and important work – today we realised it is involved in essential work as well. With much thanks and deepest gratitude Rob Warner Director of Drama Aylesbury Grammar School