Watch the brand-new play for Tewkesbury, River Stories: A Town Called to Speak

Developed from stories shared in creative workshops with local elders and children, inspired by Tewkesbury’s past, present and possible futures...

What happens when a town comes together to share its memories, hopes and concerns for the future?

In March 2026, the stage of Tewkesbury's Roses Theatre became a place where generations met through storytelling. River Stories: A Town Called to Speak brought together the voices of local elders and pupils from Queen Margaret Primary Academy in Priors Park to explore the town's relationship with its rivers, community and future. Created from stories gathered through a series of creative workshops and written in collaboration with scriptwriter Ingrid Jones of acta Community Theatre, the performance transformed personal memories and local experiences into a powerful community production.

“Watching some of those stories that I grew up with, that I never deemed or thought of to be stories actually acted out 50 years later is really good.” 

- Geoff Sallis, Tewkesbury Elder Participant

More than just a play, the event was a lively community gathering with a range of activities on offer before the performance where audience members could meet, connect, contribute ideas for a Future Tewkesbury, share creative responses and find out more about the project. With something for everyone to enjoy, whether you were 5 or 105, activities included adding wishes – for yourselves, your family, your community and the planet – to a Wishing Tree, adding a commitment for the future to a cascade of pledges, participating in citizen water quality testing, and contributing to a community river drawing.

All audience members also received a FuturesLab Action Pack on arrival at the theatre to support their involvement in the event...

Download your copy here >

“When I think back to the event, the most impactful thing, I think, was the diversity of voice and audience. Having the different workshops and the different groups that fed into the script meant we had all ages at the performance and all ages seemed to feed in with their experiences of the river.” 

- Megan Dunford, Creative Health & Community Producer, Roses Theatre

We want to be able to share the performance with as many people as possible in and around Tewkesbury to keep the conversation going and support a positive climate future for the town, so we have produced three films of the event to cater to different needs...

Tewkesbury FuturesLab Trailer

This 11-minute film offers an overview of the event, including comments from some of the research team about the project.

Tewkesbury FuturesLab Full Performance

This 38-minute film shows the performance of the play only. 

Tewkesbury FuturesLab Full Performance + Audience Interactions

This 44-minute film captures the full FuturesLab event. It includes introductory commentary from the Severn StoryLab Research Team, coverage of the pre-engagement activities for the audience, performance of the play and subsequent audience responses to the play. 

We are really keen to hear your thoughts on the experience of watching the play and have created a short online survey. Alternatively, you can send us an email us to severnstorylab@gmail.com.

If you are interested in organising a screening, please let us know and we can offer support and resources. Also, a reminder that you can keep up to date with progress with the project on Facebook and Instagram – just search 'Severn StoryLab'.

SevernStoryLab is research project with the University of West of England (UWE), Bristol exploring community stories of water in the Severn-side towns of Tewkesbury and Shrewsbury. We are really excited to be starting to pull together a River Stories script for Shrewsbury, with the help once again of Ingrid Jones. The team will then move into rehearsals at UWE in the autumn. The Shrewsbury FuturesLab event will be performed at Theatre Severn on 23rd February 2027. The event is free but will be ticketed – available from Theatre Severn soon. Please share the date with anyone you know in the area.