Summer 2024 marked the 21st birthday of TRP's Production & Learning Centre, TR2. Over the years, the building has seen the evolution of countless sets, productions and personal journeys. Work created at TR2 has been showcased all over the world and, now the building has come of age, we want to offer you the key to unlock its secrets, reflect on its past, and dream up its future.

Inspired by the tradition of giving a key to celebrate a 21st birthday, and interwoven with William Shakespeare’s great coming-of-age play The Tempest, The Key is an immersive theatre, music and dance experience featuring a cast of over 100 performers from across the organisation.

The Key was written by Malaika Kegode & John Haidar, with extracts from William Shakespeare's The Tempest and TS Eliot's Four Quartets.

An interactive festive experience for 0-3 year olds and their grown-ups...

A warm and wintery explosion of sensory goodies, amazing puppetry and silly songs. The Winter Lights was Theatre Royal Plymouth's early years Christmas show in 2023, which went on to tour local primary schools.

Cast:
Emma Baskeyfield
Phillipa Gunning

Director: Tom Jackson-Greaves
Writer-in-the-Room: Malaika Kegode
Designer: Fiona Chivers
Stage Manager: Alice Brown-Tunnell

Produced by Ryan Wilce for Theatre Royal Plymouth

An original short story for radio by Malaika Kegode.

On the hottest day of the year, Odette is sweltering behind the counter of a Torquay chip shop and questioning her life choices.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Radio 4.

Written by Malaika Kegode
Directed by Chinonyerem Odimba
Produced by tiata fahodzi

Part of Talking About a Revolution, a triple bill of new plays presented as part of tiata fahodzi’s Year of the Artist, 2022.

"I stand where he stood, so many times before, and I look out at the fields. I look out to where the orange aura of day disappears into the horizon, to the view he saw every evening for his many years here, and then I close my eyes to become him..."

An original short story written and performed by Malaika Kegode for BBC Radio 4.

Produced and directed by Becky Ripley.

Building on the UK’s rich history of spoken word poetry, The Soundscape Poetry Project has created audio spaces to showcase poems and performances through the complementary use of sound and music.

Malaika and Jakabol join Rachael Boast, Kirsten Irving, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa and Tim Turnbull on this record and its accompanying book.

Produced by Culture Recordings.

I was asked to perform as part of an LGBTQ+ History charity event on Zoom during the 2021 lockdown. Instead of doing a live set to webcam, I offered to make a short film. I wrote Wide as the Sea with my sister Handina Dutiro. I devised and shot it around my flat, then pootled around on Premiere Pro to edit and caption it, bugging my more tech-savvy friends in the process for tips.

The result is a very DIY exploration of Queerness, bisexuality, and identity, made in just under a week on a £10 budget. I hope it’s fun and meaningful. I hope it resonates. I hope you enjoy it!

Malaika Kegode has always been drawn to stories of people who manage to re-invent themselves and this is what inspired her to leave her rural Devon home in her early twenties, to escape a situation where drugs and violence had become part of her life.

Across these two episodes of One to One, she talks to people who made steps to change their lives:

Rev Paul Cowley - a man who has re-invented himself throughout his life, from prisoner to soldier and eventually to priest.

Polly Meech who, after losing her mother to cancer and then recieving her own diagnosis of the same disease, re-assessed her life and made some pretty big changes.