Cast reunites 25 years after life-changing play

Steve Harris BBC Radio Solent Dan Stanaway (left) and David Bishop returned to Penwithen School where they met as teenagers. When a group of boys excluded from mainstream education were invited to create and perform a play, they had no idea how it would transform their lives. In 2001, seven pupils at the former Penwithen School in Dorchester worked with Bournemouth community arts charity Vita Nova on a production performed in schools, universities, and a European arts festival in Latvia. Years later, project leader Sharon Coyne tried to find out what had become of the boys when Dan Stanaway arrived to fit her new oven. Stanaway is one of four original participants who reunited and says the play was pivotal. "I was a naughty child," said Stanaway. "I got excluded from pretty much every school in the Bournemouth, Poole, and Christchurch area, so they sent me here." Penwithen closed in 2005, but Stanaway stayed at the residential special school for children with behavioural difficulties. Sharon Coyne's theatre group Vita Nova brought a play about drug addiction, which resonated with pupils. Eileen Clews inspired them to create a play about their own experiences, including "basically real things like gangsta rap, shoplifting, fighting, and taking drugs." The play, *Til It All Went Wrong*, was performed in schools they’d been excluded from, at an international social inclusion conference in Exeter, and at a European arts festival in Riga, Latvia. Stanaway says it was life-changing: "They trusted us to show schools we’re not bad kids—just that we’ve got problems and can do something if given a voice." He later joined the army after receiving a passport for the trip to Latvia. Coyne wrote about the story in *Theatre of the Lost and Found*, with David Bishop praising her work: "I proved everyone wrong and took a straight path."