A Class of Your Own, a new show for eight to twelve year olds built with young people who have been excluded from school, gets its world premiere at Polka Theatre on 3 October before a single date in Luton a week later.
Tangled Feet bring a new show for eight to twelve year olds to Polka Theatre in Wimbledon next month. A Class of Your Own has its world premiere there on Saturday 3 October 2026 and plays again on Sunday 4 October, before a single performance at The Hat Factory Arts Centre in Luton on Saturday 10 October.
It is a three-way co-production between the company, Polka Theatre and The Culture Trust, Luton. The show asks what sticks to a child as they grow up, what they can shake off, and what happens when a label handed out at school starts to stay put. Its own framing is a run of questions: what do you do with the things bubbling inside you, and what if other people decide that you are the problem?
The starting point was eighteen months of work with young people who had been excluded from mainstream school. Tangled Feet gathered a group of sixteen to eighteen year olds who had all attended pupil referral units and worked with them as Creative Advisors, through workshops, time set aside for reflection and a structured feedback process, so that their own experience shaped the play. The company calls the method therapeutic theatre and has used it on earlier work.
Nathan Curry, one of Tangled Feet's co-artistic directors, directs. The cast is Emily Eversden, Farrell Cox, Tobias Adetula and zanni, and the company's physical storytelling is built out here with video projection from Gillian Tan, who designs the lighting as well.
"It's been a real pleasure to get to know and work with the Creative Advisors over the last year," said Curry. "They've offered a wealth of knowledge on what it's like to be labelled when you are young." He added: "As young people go through huge changes towards the end of Primary School and the start of Secondary School, and their identities are under huge pressure, I think the message about the effects of labelling others and labelling yourself will be important for everyone."
Alex Ramsden, the company's lead dramatherapist, set out the thinking behind the method. "Therapeutic theatre is created with and for a specific community or 'client group'," he said. "It centres the lived experiences of the co-creators, giving them genuine agency over how their stories are shaped, shared, and witnessed."
The premiere follows Need a Little Help, Butterflies and Belongings, work that took two Offie nominations and won the Audience Impact and Innovation Award at the Fantastic for Families Awards.
The rest of the creative team is dramaturg and writer in the room Shireen Mula, designer Amanda Mascarenhas, composer and sound designer Guy Connelly, lighting associates Jodi Rabinowitz and Sam Walsh, assistant director Louise Rose and executive producer Debo Adebayo.
It has been a busy autumn for the Wimbledon theatre, which put 10,000 free tickets into its schools programme earlier this month. Tickets for both dates are handled by the theatres themselves, Polka Theatre in Wimbledon and The Hat Factory Arts Centre in Luton.
