Alex Carr and Florence King are two establishing members of Old Fruit Jar Productions. It was founded in 2019 by the pair, along with four others they had met while working on This Girl - a play about Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon's first wife - in Liverpool.
Alex, 26, and Florence, 29, both live in Southport, with the other creators based across the North West. At the moment, they make adaptations of pre-existing stories.
Old Fruit Jar originated from a combination of enthusiasm and frustration. Alex is Artistic Director, playing a large role in directing the shows, while Florence is the Programme Administrator liaising with venues about performances. There are four other members of the collective.
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Jordan Barkley, Christina Rose, Anthony Roberts and Rachel McGrath are fellow actors and creatives at Old Fruit Jar. Together, they all act while playing a role behind the scenes.
Florence explained: "Not long after meeting, we all have different skill sets, so we've stuck together since really. We knew that we worked well together and could also be like really honest with each other."
Alex said they all wanted to stay in the north west, a "melting pot for creatives", but opportunities were hard to come by. He said: "If you're from a working class background and from the north, it's almost impossible to get an actual job in the industry.
"So we've had to make our own opportunities, which is borne out of frustration and also to prove our passion for it, and what Liverpool and the wider north west can offer."
There was still initial uncertainty about going for the independent approach. But when Old Fruit Jar sold out and received rave reviews at the Hope Street Theatre for their first show, they decided to fully commit to it.
Their adaptation of Woyzeck, a stage play first performed in 1913 about a struggling solider, again challenged perspectives according to Alex. He argued: "It was quite an important, poignant show about mental health and the effects that mental health has on your relationships, on your job, and on various other things as well.
"We had a lot of support for how we represented mental health. That was the moment where I thought 'we've got something here, we need to commit to it'".
Since then, they have gone on to receive similar acclaim for their adaptation of Twelfth Night at the Royal Court. Such a performance tackled not only popular sentiment around Shakespeare, but the type of shows that are suitable for the Royal Court's audience.
Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, set on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, and is based around a night of entertainment marking the end of Christmas with fluid gender identities.
On how they approached their adaptation, Florence said: "The play didn't need dumbing down or sugar-coating. We didn't change the language at all.
"The joy with Shakespeare is that you can set it wherever you like. We chose an 1980s party island, Club Tropicana Ibiza style. We had a bar on stage, everyone's in swimming trunks."
The feedback they received was exactly what they were aiming for. She added: "Lots of people in the audience said, 'I would never have come to see Shakespeare, but you made me enjoy it'. That's a great feeling for us.
"Shakespeare is really not appealing to a lot of people because of the language and so on. But we got it to a different audience and we were absolutely made up with that."
Florence and Alex still do full time jobs alongside their work. Alex works in a tech company and Florence is a teacher. They both hope to make theatre their full time profession one day. As Alex put it: "That's what we've dreamt of doing since we were kids."
Alex, who is originally from Liverpool city centre, said that they deliberately pick tales that tackle pre-existing views on a range of subjects. Their upcoming production, The Incident Room, will be performed at the Black-E on Great George Street. It adapted from a book of the same name centred around the police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.
Alex admitted that some fans of true crime, who may be more interested in gory details and the thrill of the chase, will attend. However, he hopes that they will leave wanting to "make a difference" in changing how women are treated and perceived.
He said: "We hope they'll try and make a change to how the world views women, how the world views prostitutes or people who have to do what they can to survive. First and foremost, they were all completely innocent.
"Just because of how they earned a living or how they kept themselves going, they should never have been dragged through the mud because of that."
Florence said that learning about the behaviour of the police force made her "sick to her stomach". She added: "These men essentially were just trying to beat each other. You know, a 'I'm gonna find him first' attitude.
"They didn't even care really who it was. They just wanted to get a name. The lack of respect for the victims, naming them all prostitutes when a lot of them weren't.
"And even the ones that were prostitutes, talking about them as if they had no morals - the language is mind blowing. It makes you feel sick to the stomach."
Florence is hopeful that the audience, like the cast themselves, will pick up on eerily similarities between sexism in society then and now. She explained: "When we've been in rehearsals and we've been saying, 'does this sound familiar to you?' Like even in 2023, we hear on the news about behaviour in police force. It's been really eye-opening."
Florence's priority is ensuring that the play is respectful towards the victims. She said: "We don't talk about the murders really. It's not all about the gruesome details. It's literally shining a light on how poorly the police force handled it."
The Incident Room will have multiple showings from May 30 to June 3 at The Black-E on Great George Street. Tickets can be bought here.
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