Bobby & Amy go on a South East Tour!

See Bobby & Amy at the Wyvern Theatre, and see what happens when people's way of life is threatened by people who don't understand it.

Following its award winning sell-out run at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival, Bobby & Amy returns this autumn for a 17-venue tour across South and East England. A dark comedy about friendship, heartache and the repercussions of foot-and-mouth disease written and directed by double Fringe First winner Emily Jenkins and starring Will Howard and Kimberley Jarvis, this powerful play asks what happens when our way of life is threatened by those who don’t understand it.

It’s the late 90s: Take That, Tamagotchis, Dip Dabs and Pog Swaps. When 13 year olds Bobby and Amy meet, hundreds of cows dot across the fields and the sun always shines. But when foot-and-mouth disease hits the farming communities in rural England and the cows begin to burn, Bobby and Amy’s sleepy Cotswold town faces a catastrophe that will change their home forever. Celebrating the power of community in times of unprecedented adversity, Bobby & Amy is as relevant to pandemic times as it was at the turn of the century.

2021 marks the 20th year anniversary of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK. In February 2001, foot-and-mouth was discovered at an Essex abattoir and it quickly spread across the UK. The highly infectious disease plunged the agricultural industry into its worst crisis for decades with over six million cows and sheep killed in an eventually successful attempt to halt the disease. However, the devastation the outbreak left behind was much more long lasting, with many communities and rural businesses feeling the economic and psychological repercussions for decades after.

Having grown up in the countryside, writer Emily Jenkins has strong memories of the horrors of foot-and-mouth disease – the smell of disinfectant, distant burning, and the bright yellow tape strung across every gate and sty. However, Bobby & Amy is also a celebration of British agriculture, small rural communities and the huge amount they contribute to the wider world. Currently 69% of land in the UK is being used for agriculture (it was a great deal more in 2000) which provides almost 500,000 jobs to this country, and contributes over 10 billion to the nation’s economy.

Emily Jenkins comments: “The day the cows started burning, many communities were changed forever. 1/3 But, as a Gloucestershire-raised writer and director, it struck me that nothing in the theatre I’d seen – or anything, really – was talking about an event that deeply affected the childhood of so many of us, or about the continuing erosion of a way of life centuries in the making. So that’s why I wrote Bobby & Amy. To talk about what has happened to towns in the area I grew up in and others like it”.

Jenkins adds: “Set 20 years in the past, Bobby & Amy speaks to the present as Britain is once again struck by sudden shut down, isolation, economic decline, and a dynamic shift in the way we live and interact with our environment. But this story is more than that, it’s a celebration of community, nature, agriculture, and the importance of finding your voice and fighting for what you believe in, however hopeless things seem. Bobby & Amy is a story for right now that many will connect to, whether they remember foot-and-mouth or not”.

Producer Emma Blackman comments: “After a long period of lockdowns and isolation, we’re extremely excited to be sharing this Fringe First Award winning show with audiences again. Thanks to house and Arts Council England’s support, the tour will span across 17 theatres in just under one month. Although South East England is densely populated, over 80% of the area is classified as rural - and we look forward to bringing Bobby & Amy’s coming-of-age story to both the urban and rural communities in the region.”

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