Our vision is to create theatre as a healing, transformative, and cathartic experience.
— The Courtyard Theatre (2014)
Flute Theatre creates interactive, playful, heartfelt Shakespeare performances with autistic people.
Using the extraordinary listening skills, clarity of storytelling developed through this work, we create further productions for wider Audiences at venues ranging from refugee camps to major international festivals.
Compassion
Shakespeare’s compassionate empathy toward mankind is at the heart of our work. This is embodied through our approach to Shakespeare; focussing on his poetic exploration of the ‘seeing mind’ and the ‘loving eye’. Our use of Shakespeare’s heartbeat offers a warm and womb like space, where autistic people may alleviate their fears and anxieties and begin to express themselves in their own way.
Flexibility
Every performance is adapted to the specific needs of our participants, no matter where they are on the spectrum, what language they speak or whether they can even make it into the theatre space. We will perform in the street through a car window if a participant is too anxious to enter a building. Our flexibility as a company allows us to respond to the needs of marginalised people when existential crisis occur. We did this during the pandemic with our adapted performances and through our immediate response to helping Ukrainian refugees in May 2022.
Internationalism
Many of our participants around the world are nonverbal and perform Shakespeare with us in a shared language of heart, soul and body; the spoken word is the last tool of communication needed. We offer our productions of Shakespeare to autistic people around the world, continually learning where our similarities lie in human rhythm and gesture rather than focussing on our differences.
"It's a privilege to run Flute. The plays create a living practice for everyone involved."
—Kelly directing in Barcelona (2017)
Our team of specialised actors
— Mercury Theatre, Colchester (2023)
Support our Theatre
Funding for the arts is currently said to be at a ‘terminal decline’ but we will continue to create our life changing opportunities whatever the challenges. Please help us continue with a one off donation or a monthly subscription. Your donations go directly toward our performances with marginalised people and always will.