Simon Wilkinson - Lung Ha’s Castle Lennox
Simon Wilkinson is the Lighting Designer for Lung Ha’s Castle Lennox.
“You said small spaces encourage large thoughts and... then you locked the door.”
When Annis, a young girl with autism, finds herself incarcerated in Lennox Castle Hospital, an institution which might as well be a prison, designed for the incarceration of ‘the feeble minded’, her first impulse is to try and escape the brutal regime of punishment and medication. However, as she gets to know her fellow patients they introduce her to another world – a world exploding with colour and song. This is an enchanted castle in which the once-a-month disco offers an alternative reality to the daily doses of pills, punishments, and restraint.
Linda McLean (Glory on Earth at The Lyceum) has written a play with songs (by MJ McCarthy) about the strength, wit and resilience of those who were sent to Castle Lennox during a regime of segregation from the 1930s to the 1990s. This inspiring tale, based on a real institution, is brought to the stage in collaboration with the brilliant Lung Ha Theatre Company (Dr Stirlingshire’s Discovery, We Are All Just Little Creatures).
