Potential Difference

Just a few hours left of Arts for Impact and the chance to have your donation DOUBLED!

We are so close to raising our target of £4k to help bring Classbot 450 to 2000 school children in Brent and Ealing this Summer.

Any donations made today before noon will be DOUBLED by so even the price of a coffee can have a huge impact!

Big Give's 'Arts for Impact' campaign is here! Help us to get Classbot 450, our amazing immersive learning adventure, to 2,000 more children across Ealing and Brent.

Technology and AI play a rapidly growing part in our lives. However, many primary schools lack the resources to deliver quality coding education. Children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds with less access to technology at home, are at risk of being put at a life-long disadvantage. There is also a growing gender gap in computing. Meanwhile, the national curriculum has no space to explore the social and educational challenges posed by AI, which will have a huge impact on this generation of children.

Classbot 450 is an interactive adventure for primary school children made with the brilliant KIT Theatre. It revolves around “the world’s first robot teacher”. Unfortunately, she malfunctions spectacularly during her first lesson, leaving it up to the children to discover her source code and reprogram her using a specially designed coding interface. This kicks off a week-long narrative all about AI that unfolds across assemblies, videos and creative workshops where children will solve coding challenges, build confidence and critical thinking.

Arts for Impact is a very special campaign in which Big Give will DOUBLE all donations made before March 25th (ie if you give £5, we will get £10). Even the equivalent amount to a cup of coffee can have real impact!

https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05WS000001iRQYYA2

Did you ever have an imaginary friend as a child? 🎤

📣 Russell is giving a free lunchtime talk at Watershed in *Bristol* on Friday 21 Feb about a NEW project that he’s developing with writer Sarah Golding: ‘The Invisible Friend’.

It’s an interactive show that will combine live theatre, head tracking technology, and spatial audio to help bring a child’s imagination to life.

Curious but not in Bristol? Join us online on YouTube Live.

Free but booking recommended. More info and 🎟
https://www.watershed.co.uk/studio/events/2025/02/21/lunchtime-talk-invisible-friend


📷 Helen White

Stunning production pics from Fragments now running at The Playground Theatre till 6th May. We're thrilled that we've been nominated for an Offie for Lucy Sierra's amazing set design.

Lucy's dusty 70s office is a whole extra character in the show - a giant playground of tricks and transformations. It's brought to life by the amazing shadow puppetry of Jess Mabel Jones and Lori Hopkins, the lighting of Sherry Coenen and the costumes of Maariyah Sharjil.

📸Geraint Lewis

What's it like to study the fragments of lost ancient plays & poetry, to then create new live theatre out of them?

Here's a short film we made about the world of papyrology and how it's inspired Fragments, our new play opening NEXT WEEK at The Playground Theatre and in May at Old Fire Station, Oxford

Featuring:
Laura Swift
Russell Bender
Enrico Prodi
Jess Mabel Jones

Produced by Wendy Kibble for Potential Difference
Filmed and edited by Dylan Tate of Tate Creations

Staging Fragments - plays and papyrology What is it like to study papyrus fragments of ancient Greek lost plays & poetry? How can you create new live theatre out of them? A short film about the worl...

Rehearsals are underway! Fragments is a new play about a lost one...inspired by the greatest Greek tragedy you’ve never seen. Here are some gorgeous rehearsal pics of the amazing cast.


The Playground Theatre London - 14 April to 6 May
Old Fire Station, Oxford - 12-13 May

Tickets from £10
🎟️BOOK HERE ➙ linktr.ee/potentialdifference

On we salute the ‘lost plays’ – all the plays ever made that have been forgotten and destroyed, or exist only in distant memories, dusty archives, or fragile scraps of papyrus.

And we're very excited to be in rehearsals for our new play Fragments!

It’s about the search for the greatest play you’ve never seen, by the ancient playwright Euripides. Most of what we have of the text today comes from an actor’s working script from the third century CE. Now those actor's lines will be heard aloud on stage for the first time in nearly two thousand years.

Happy World Theatre Day!

Coming soon to The Playground Theatre 🎟️ bit.ly/fragmentsTPT




📷
Actor Akiel Dowe holds a large sheet of papyrus in his hand, lit by the light of an overhead projector in a dark room.
Photo by Richard Wyllie.

Dear friends, we are delighted to announce that the world premiere of Fragments, by Laura Swift and Russell Bender is here...

We can’t wait to share our collaboration with Classicist Laura Swift exploring mysterious fragments of an ancient lost play. After our work was interrupted for a while in 2020, we are back and coming to London and Oxford in April and May 2023.

Tickets for our London run at The Playground Theatre are available now.

For more information and booking visit: bit.ly/fragmentsTPT