During spring term 2021, two students from Central School of Speech and Drama completed a playwriting residency at The National Archives. Dom and Abbie used records from the collection to inspire their scripts as part of their BA Writing for Performance degree. The residency took place completely online so they used digital facsimiles of documents to explore the archive.
Dom and Abbie spent some time researching potential themes by using online Education resources. They were also introduced to record experts who helped them choose relevant documents and understand the historical context.
The resulting scripts are a helpful resource for learning about 19th-century workhouses and the Cato Street conspiracy. Dom and Abbie have shown that you can use drama to explore themes from the archive in an interesting way.
Alongside extracts from their scripts are images of the documents as well as their reflections on working with the archive collection.