Roadside – Trinity Centre Machinal - Bath Theatre Royal

Roadside is billed as an original theatre production to celebrate the New Traveller community.

Maddie Wakeling, a van dweller and actor from Glastonbury, Somerset, performs the one-hour, one-woman show inspired by her own experiences of searching for autonomy and a different kind of life.

Wakeling initially trained as an actor at the Manchester School of Theatre and is a recent graduate of MA Advanced Theatre Practice at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

She opted to become a New Traveller in her early adulthood, partly to carve out sufficient time and space for her writing, art and activism.

As a creative, Wakeling makes physical, political work, rooted in meaningful community engagement and the belief that everyone has the right to access creative spaces. Her writing blends poetry with playful dialogue and she loves telling stories infused with a heady blend of festival culture, folklore and countercultural chaos.

Roadside was initially developed as part of Starting Blocks 2023 and is now supported by ACE, Trinity Centre and Camden People’s Theatre.

Drawn in part from real-life testimony and the ‘musical history’ of new travellers living across the South West, the narrative centres on the story of Milly, a young woman searching for a home amidst the free parties and firelight of the roadside-dwelling community.

Free-spirited Milly is drawn to the parties and festivals of the community. She dances, talks and explores – looking for a different kind of life for herself. The key question is whether she really wants to live a life on the road, like the people she meets beside their vans. Can she really find “an authentic and autonomous life” out here? Milly heads out over the fields searching for clarity, but instead of answers, she meets riddles on the dance floor and shadows by the fireside.

New Travellers is a term often used to describe people who choose to live nomadically. It also describes the community which came out of the free festival movement in the 1960s.

Wakeling was 21 when she chose to move into a van herself, and she began to have regular discussions about the lifestyle with the local New Traveller community. She began planning Roadside in 2023, following calls to ban roadside dwellers from living in unauthorised areas in Glastonbury. She hopes the production will leave audience members reflecting on what home and belonging means to them.

Alongside Wakeling, the success of the project is testament to the talents of the creative team – namely director Dominika Ucar, lighting designer Joe Price, and sound designer Lisa Meech, whose soundtrack of dub, drum n bass and folk tunes underscores the play with great impact.

While not every one of the evening’s vignettes is entirely successful, and the play takes some time to get into its groove, together these poignant, bitter – and often humorous – scenes have a powerful cumulative effect.

Ultimately, Roadside is an innovative and inspiring piece deftly weaving together authentic storytelling and high-quality sound design that perfectly encapsulates free party culture. And it’s a particularly impressive feat for Wakeling, whose charm and wit shines bright throughout.