Ilkley Players present: The Animals

1 hour with [optional] Q & A session at the end.

This is how The Animals is summarised by the National Theatre team:

Student teacher Sam arrives at Redhill Youth Custody Secure Unit hoping to enrich the troubled residents' lives there by introducing them to the subject of Philosophy.

The wary class resist engaging in this alien, ancient art of thinking, at first, but start to thaw when they find themselves being challenged and empowered in ways they haven't previously experienced. Yet the hope Sam's teaching offers them is fragile, particularly for hard fronting Gee, who's on the verge of being released from the unit and is secretly terrified at this prospect. The Animals looks at education within the Youth Custody System and the difficulties young people there face.

Sean Buckley is a British-Irish playwright and screenwriter from South London. He studied drama at the University of Hull and Ecole Jaques Lecoq and was a member of the Royal Court Young Writers' Programme.

His first play Matches for Monkeys was winner of the Verity Bargate Award and he was Pearson Writer in Residence with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Other plays include Between Dog and Wolf, Smithereens (both Paines Plough) and audio drama Stone Baby (Radio 3) received a BBC New Writing Award.

Sean wrote episodes for three series of Skins (E4) and the feature length drama Responsible Child (Kudos / BBC2) for which he was BAFTA nominated and won the International Emmy for Best TV Movie/Mini-series. He has also written and directed the short film Polar Bear (Inflammable films / Film 4).