We’ve wanted to make a show with teenagers for ages, and 2024 finally became the perfect time. Restoke turned 15 last year—our own adolescence—while our oldest child became a teenager (and will also be in the show!!).

We weren’t sure what common ground we'd find, and how we’d forge creative connections… Restoke projects have always been rooted in sharing personal stories, but we knew this process would require a different approach. The Power Project has unfolded in the most beautifully non-linear journey for the past 12 months…. we've had to learn new ways of listening and untether ourselves from familiar ways of working.
 
What has been most joyful to witness is the stronghold that music has in teenagers lives. Music has been a beautiful web of connection in this project - leading to our most open, animated conversations and magic moments of seeing the company gathered around one individual playing or singing with a reverence that felt beyond their years. 

It feels like echoes of our own teenage selves, when a pair of headphones and favourite songs were enough to transcend most of the darker corners of adolescence, so we did find some common ground after all : ) 

The stories in the show, unlike other Restoke productions, are fantasy. But written so carefully by Florence Espeut-Nickless (who has been with us the whole 12 months) using their own writing, conversations, loves, fears and pressures and weaving them into a fictional trilogy which feels so authentic to this company. And they’ve shaped every part of it, from movement to music to design.

When we set out to make this show with teenagers, we did have a starting point, a picture of how it might look and feel… and I’m happy to say that this show is nothing like that vision, which hopefully means it’s totally reflective of them.

Clare & Paul 
Restoke Co-Directors