Paul Birch takes a look at our new national tour – Simeon’s Watch…

“Change can bring real challenges to families, particularly the changes that threaten to alter our relationships with the people we love most. Simeon’s Watch focuses on three generations of one family and the impact on all of them as they face the demands of growing old.”

So writes Bridget Foreman about her new play for Riding Lights. This is a production which picks up echoes of the biblical story of Simeon, the man who watches and waits at the end of his life, not forgotten by God, until he glimpses the hope God has prepared for us all.

The script for Simeon’s Watch comes from a series of workshops with those living with dementia, their families (including young people) and professional care staff and clinicians. Over a number of weeks we met at Friargate Theatre and in residential care homes, exploring ways that drama might help these families communicate better, as they continue to care for one another. Using improvisation, play and applied theatre techniques, we discovered the range of emotions created by the demands of ageing, including, sometimes, a Simeon-like joy and peace in the middle of it all.

In several dramas addressing this subject, the story is often constructed around the theme of loss – whether it’s memory, dignity, relationship or hope. Our aim was to bring out some of the other ‘notes’ from the stories we found in these workshops – notes of love, comedy, play and intimacy.

Simeon’s Watch explores ways in which responding to change more playfully can often transform our relationships. Children and young people, of course, do this best. Care homes that have nurseries or schools attached to them demonstrate the positive impact shared by the different generations while they interact. Responding ‘playfully’ to painful interactions will never reverse time or heal damaged minds but it can radically improve the quality of relationship and communication. This production is a celebration of that.

If Simeon’s Watch is to be a distinctive ‘voice’, Riding Lights wants that to be one that refuses to let a sense of fear put further stress on loving relationships that have been nurtured over many years. However old or young we may be, we hope this play will change minds about the problem of changing minds!

You can find out more about the show, as well as a list of tour dates, at ridinglights.org/simeon