We Are Not Shellfish
A play with puppets and masks
by Zoe Hinks
On the East coast of Kent, 11 year old Leah finds a message in a bottle. Inside is a phone number from a child living in the forest near Calais. With the help of an octopus, Leah hatches a plan to build a boat and sail the channel.
Narrated by Leah’s goldfish, Bertie and Cassandra, We Are Not Shellfish is an alternative coming of age story, about a girl with the imagination, courage and ambition to change the world.
"An absolute dream"
Megan Johnson, Director of Smugglers Festival
We are not Shellfish toured Kent and Cornwall in 2019 and Norfolk, Surrey and Sussex in 2022.
The Looker
A play with puppets and masks
by Zoe Hinks
Things move so fast these days it’s easy to get lost. Lost in time. Lost in ourselves. To cope with this feeling Vida writes letters to herself in the future. Sometimes she leaves voice messages. One day the future calls her back.
"Stepping into The Looker feels like walking into another world. One populated by puppets and people and all sorts in-between, with magic and music in the air." **** Broadway Baby
The Looker did a horse drawn tour of Kent and Sussex in 2017 and then toured festivals in 2018.
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The Soldier's Tale
Directed by Carl Boardman
A soldier returning from war strikes a deal to sell his battered old fiddle to The Devil on a promise of ‘wealth untold’. When he later discovers he’s been cruelly tricked out of everything he holds dear, he sets out on a new path. But can a real trickster really be tricked? News of an ailing princess spurs him on. But does he hold the power to rebuild his life and regain the peace and happiness he so desires? Or has a war dance only just begun?
100 years since it was first performed, Sabotage Theatre collaborated with chamber orchestra BRIDGETOWER MUSIC in a staging of Stravinsky’s trail-blazing music theatre masterpiece, at the JAM on the Marsh Festival in 2018.
Owlers
By Zoe Hinks
Crawfurd Quinn has a pain so bad he cannot work. When Crawfurd Quinn can’t work, the whole village goes without, for Crawfurd works the Free Trade. With pain such as this there is only one thing to do, and that is to go and visit the two old, mad sisters who live in the lighthouse, to see if they have some spell or potion or spirit it away.
Weaving history and folklore, Owlers followed the bizarre story of Kit; a cross-dressing Tub Boy working for the Aldington Gang of smugglers, when – in 1826 – a routine landing of contraband ends in disaster.
Owlers visited forests, churches and barns between May and July 2015 on Sabotage Theatre's third horse-drawn tour of Kent and East Sussex.
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Ravens
by Zoe Hinks
Horse Drawn Tour of Romney Marsh
A stranger is rescued from a devastating shipwreck and left in the care of two peasant sisters. In order to escape their impoverished existence, the sisters create a fictional identity for him with their own desires entwined; but the truth about the stranger is far more sinister than they could ever have envisaged...
Inspired by local witch hunts, the play was set on Romney Marsh in 1659. Ravens visited 9 open air venues on Romney Marsh. It was lit with fire and staged on a horse drawn waggon in the summer of 2013.
"the audience were gripped as the twists and turns of the play lurched and unfolded. Sabotage Theatre are a young company worth your attention and Zoe Hinks is clearly a writer worth watching." **** Fringe Review
The Horse drawn Cinema Show
Directed by Elena Saorin
devised by the Company
script by Zoe Hinks
In 1911 Mr Alexander Carroll, a disillusioned Irish bare fist boxer, embarked upon a mission to illuminate the fields of England with the thrills of the silver screen.
Little did he know that a century later a troupe of players would be travelling to the far flung corners of the Kentish countryside with a Horse Drawn Cinema Show inspired by his enterprise.
The Horse Drawn Cinema Show was the first of Sabotage's rural tours in 2011, with an open air performance inspired by the early travelling Edwardian Fairground cinematographs, using masks, melodrama and physical comedy.
"Strongly reccomended" Meridian News
The Cinderella Project
Written and Directed by Zoe Hinks
Paintings by Jake Spicer
The Cinderella Project of 'Lucian' was a combination of audio drama, installation based interactive theatre and live painting. The audience climbed through picture frames and into the mind of the Alchemist Painter, Lucien Yemie. They listened to the stories engrained in the pictures, and watched the painter at work.
This was the culmination of a year's Paint/Theatre collaborative work in 2010 between Zoe Hinks and Jake Spicer exploring the nature of art, love and mortality.
What All The Rabbits Are Doing
2008 London, Edinburgh, Brighton
“It's unusual to walk into a play and be confronted with a naked girl, but that's exactly what awaits the audience in What all the Rabbits are Doing. However this is more than mere titillation: Zoe Hinks' play has a lot more up its sleeve.” **** British Theatre Guide
The prisons are full. An increasing demand for alternatives spurns new and experimental methods of rehabilitation. Raymond has a history of violent crime and has served two years in jail so far. However, his sentence takes an extraordinary turn when he is assigned to undertake life-drawing classes as part of a government programme. Marianna, an optimistic and fervent charity worker, has taken on a the job of being his life model. Scrutinized by scientists and surveyed continuously by snipers, they become increasingly obsessed with their task. Raymond wants to learn to draw. Marianna wants to save his soul.