Coronavirus: BBC to broadcast Headlong’s digital plays

Headlong’s isolation-inspired new-writing project has announced a partnership with the BBC, which will broadcast the digital plays as part of its quarantine offering.

Unprecedented: Real Time Theatre from a State of Isolation was announced last month as a collaboration between the theatre company and Century Films.

Writers such as James Graham, Duncan Macmillan, April De Angelis and Jasmine Lee-Jones were confirmed to be taking part, writing new short plays in response to current circumstances.

Using digital conferencing technology and combining live and pre-recorded material, the plays will be performed by a cast of more than 50 actors and brought to life with the help of a team of directors and freelance creatives.

They will be broadcast by the BBC as part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative, and will be available to stream from May.

The project has also confirmed the directors involved, including outgoing Headlong artistic director Jeremy Herrin, alongside Ned Bennett, Tinuke Craig, Ola Ince, Blanche McIntyre and Holly Race Roughan.

Others confirmed include Deborah Bruce, Debbie Hannan, Brian Hill, Nathaniel Martello-White and Caitlin McLeod.

Headlong said the plays would respond to the evolution of our understanding of themes such as community, education, relationships and capitalism during the global coronavirus crisis, and would ask “how we got here and what the enduring legacy of his historic episode might be”.