Game of Governments began life as a short ply which I wrote as part of the 28 Plays Later (now called The Literal Challenge) of 2018. At the time, it was just an experiment in writing over-the-top political shenanigans, but the silly characters captured my imagination, partly because I began to see the potential in a simple story which was not pushing a specific political agenda. I wanted to know whether the piece could work as longer piece, so I developed the text into a full play. 

Around that time, I happened to be telling a colleague about the idea and she mentioned that the directing students at Mountview Academy were looking for new plays to work on. This seemed like a great way to hear the play our loud and inform further development. I was lucky enough that Jasper Frost, one of the students, loved the text and so organised a reading. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, connecting to people of all backgrounds. Perhaps most striking was that in this international group of students, everyone related to the bin jokes.  

However, one difficulty was that it was hard to know if the physical comedy written into the text worked. I developed a new draft and in 2019 we staged a performance as part of The RADA Festival. The audience were again so enthused that they were bubbling with questions and ideas. To name just two, confetti for blood worked better than we could have imagined and there was an appetite for the play to offer a positive solution to the problems it raised. 

Another draft has been developed in response to the ideas from this performance, and we look forward to seeing how audiences at the 2021 Fringes react to the play.