![\"Macbeth](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/MacbethRJ-V2-1080-x-1080-e1747230791168-1024x1012.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA Liverpool Theatre company is using a Shakespearean tragedy to help warn young people about the dangers of knife crime.<\/p>\n
\u2018A Place For Us\u2019 has joined forces with north west charity The JJ Effect, which delivers hard-hitting anti-knife crime presentations to help educate youngsters.<\/p>\n
And in five areas where it performs its latest outdoor production of Romeo and Juliet this summer, A Place For Us will offer workshops led by the charity launched by Byron Highton, whose brother Jon-Jo was killed in 2014.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s part of a community project called All Are Punished, made possible by a grant awarded by the National Lottery Community Fund.<\/p>\n
Kate Allerston, founder and director of A Place For Us, based in Woolton, says:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing a professional tour of Romeo and Juliet and of course that addresses a lot of the issues about knife crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we decided to partner up with The JJ Effect to deliver the set of five workshops across the North West which link in to our production.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are all aimed at young people because that\u2019s the theme of the play aswell.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an outdoor production, so it\u2019s not going to schools but to main venues, and with the grant we are also able to offer 30 free tickets to people who come to each of the knife crime workshops to see the play.\u201d<\/p>\n
She goes on: \u201cShakespeare is one of our specialisms and I am a firm believer that Romeo and Juliet is not a love story.\u00a0 It\u2019s about five people who are murdered within two weeks or whatever it is, and a lot of that is to do with impetuous decisions that are made in the moment, in the heat of the moment, in chaos, and with knives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tale as old as time, but totally relevant to now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was listening to the radio only the other day and there was a fatal stabbing of three young people in the North West, and it could have been the story we are telling. This is a 500-year-old story, but things haven\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be talking about it more, that it\u2019s not a game to carry a knife!\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Bastock, Kate\u2019s husband and fellow artistic director of A Place For Us, adds:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always recognised that performing arts and theatre drama has got a real power to impact people, so when you look at having something and someone as impactful as Byron from The JJ Effect put alongside a play which has its own emotions, it seems appropriate to weave those two together.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like there\u2019s a social responsibility to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as a professional theatre company, A Place For Us is a community interest company which runs an award-winning theatre school, providing training and opportunities for young people, as well as community programmes and holiday theatre clubs.<\/p>\n
While some might argue that the job of a theatre company is to entertain rather than educate Chris says:<\/p>\n
\u201cI think nowadays it\u2019s impossible to separate those two things.\u00a0 There\u2019s so much power in drama and especially because we are involved in that \u2018through process\u2019 right from first access to professional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we work with young people,\u201d continues Kate who, like Chris, has 35 years\u2019 experience in the performing arts industry. \u201cWe see the horrors of what happens with violence, and we can\u2019t just tell a story about five young people being stabbed to death without actually saying maybe there\u2019s something else we can do here.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can just be entertained. You don\u2019t have to come to a workshop. But if you are coming to the workshop and you have got an interest in it or you\u2019ve got a concern, maybe about one of your family members, then you can see the show and see what happens and think \u2018things haven\u2019t changed that much have they?\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then you can ask, well what do we do about that, or maybe it\u2019s just a conversation that we start having?\u201d<\/p>\n
Romeo and Juliet will be performed in Runcorn, Widnes, Liverpool, Knowsley \u2013 at Shakespeare North Playhouse \u2013 and Bolton alone and as a double bill with Macbeth (with accessible abridged versions) from the end of June, with the workshops taking place in communities before. The dates are still to be finalised.<\/p>\n
The plays will be performed alone and as a double bill in other areas too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are doing will add an edge or an opportunity to explore the themes around the play,\u201d says Kate.<\/p>\n
To find out more about Romeo and Juliet or A Place For Us, go to their website \u00a0www.placeforus.org.uk<\/a>\u00a0or see their posts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok (@aplaceforuscic).<\/p>\n For more information about The JJ Effect the website<\/a>.
\nFind all the latest Liverpool news here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Liverpool Theatre company is using a Shakespearean tragedy to help warn young people about the dangers of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,5554,2766,393,126,4884,179,2764,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-101078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-community","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-features","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-liverpool","15":"tag-theatre","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}