Giles Woodforde talks to artistic director Lucy Maycock about her new play Song of Riots

With 5,175 offences recorded by the police, and almost 4,000 people arrested, the 2011 London riots must surely be classed as a major incident.

Although the riots were not on our immediate doorstep, Lucy Maycock, artistic director of Oxford’s North Wall arts centre, soon began thinking about them, and asking questions about modern masculinity: who are these wild boys running loose in our cities? How do boys cross the bridge from childhood to maturity, and what happens if they fail to make that journey?

Three years in the making, Lucy’s new play Song of Riots has come out of those thoughts and questions.

“We did a piece here at the North Wall three years ago that looked at recession, young people, and riots,” Lucy explains.

“This was with a group of 18-25 year olds who were doing an outreach project here. We talked with the boys about their sense of frustration, and about making the transition from childhood to being a man.

“That fed specifically into a fear of young men that I saw just about everywhere I looked, especially those wearing hoodies. Society, I felt, had begun to see them at best as a bit of a nuisance, and at worst as a threat.”

“Song of Riots uses text, song, physical theatre, and the poetry of William Blake to tell a coming-of-age story of two boys. One is a privileged prince from a fairytale, the other a modern inner-city kid. They meet as rioting breaks out.

“I travelled through Peckham, one of the worst affected areas, 48 hours after the London riots, and was deeply moved by the resilience of the local community.

“Streets were sparklingly clean, and replacement stalls had been set up on the pavements outside looted shops.”

But, I admit to Lucy, I certainly didn’t connect the riots with either fairytale princes or William Blake.

“It’s a bit of a combination, and I’ll try to explain it as best I can!” she replies. “We decided to take a fairytale, because they’re kind of road maps for how we develop – that’s why we’ve told them for hundreds of years.

“We then contrast the fairytale prince against the story of a boy who perhaps didn’t have the right structure to enable him to grow up – he’s the son of Polish immigrants living in London, and the father has left home.

“Blake came into it because he’s a working-class poet, for a start. He’s also a mystic, and got swept up in London riots himself: he wrote poems about them. Plus, after the 2011 riots a group of people decided they would replant the Blake Oak in Peckham, where he’d had a vision and seen angels. That moved me so much.”

Song of Riots is a co-production between North Wall and Awake Projects, who are based in Västerås, Sweden. The show has its world premiere in Oxford, then tours internationally. But how, I ask Awake Projects artistic director Christopher Sivertsen, did Oxford come to be connected with Västerås?

“A mutual friend, Ed Kemp, artistic director of RADA, introduced us by email – it was an electronic blind date. He told me that Lucy was ‘absolutely smashing’.” As Lucy roars with laughter, Christopher continues: “We met, and I found that it was all true. I was invited to do Peer Gynt here in 2011, and we’ve collaborated ever since.”

Watching an hour’s rehearsal, the word “opera” comes to mind. A scene in which Lukasz, the Polish boy, is questioned by his mother about a hoard of gold rings spilling out of his pockets, is set to a firm musical beat, with song and abstract dance woven into the dialogue. With Christopher beating time like a conductor, humour bubbles up too.

“There’s a playfulness about the Prince and Lukasz, for all that we might want to steer them towards tragedy,” Lucy explains. “You can’t keep them down for long, they have joy in them. I wouldn’t want people coming along thinking they were going to see a piece of Wagner, it’s a bit jollier than that!”

Song of Riots
The North Wall, Oxford
April 14-18
Tickets from 01865 319450 or thenorthwall.com