What's On

This is a play written by a 21 year old Londoner and inspired by the real stories of victims and perpetrators of knife crime.

Fox Hunting is a thought-provoking piece of verbatim theatre based on transcripts of interviews with young people from South London directly affected by knife crime.

 

Knife crime is on the rise in London and accounts for more than a third of all knife crime offences across the UK. With nearly 40,000 recorded knife crime offences and 80 fatalities in 2017 in London, knife crime is still one of the UK's worst criminal issues, nowhere more prevalently than in London.

 

With a novel and insightful vantage point, this play shines a light on how knife crime affects not only the victims, but also those who perpetrate these crimes. Fox Hunting portrays a sad normality for teenagers growing up in the capital: knives are a part of life. This play unflinchingly tackles the sometimes-uncomfortable issues of religion, race, area code wars, police relations and the criminal justice system.

 

Five boys: T, Lawrence, Jake, Joshua and Darral, share their experiences with knife crime and how it has affected their way of living. The play opens at the funeral of a boy who met an untimely death at the blade of a knife. The five protagonists attend the funeral and are faced with the grim reality of a wasted life. As they battle with their emotions, and their consciences, the question of innocence surfaces. At such a young age, when did they lose theirs? How did they not see it being taken from them? They compare themselves to foxes that fell victim to fox hunting: unsuspecting, ill-equipped and trapped. The leviathan that is knife crime has ravaged each one of them; victim and perpetrator alike and like a hunted fox, very few make it out alive.