Beyond the show: touring workshops and training

Written by Amy, Executive Director of Zoo Co. Click here to listen.

It’s June 2026, and our epic UK Tour of Perfect Show for Rachel has just drawn to a close. Since October, we’ve visited 7 venues across England with our critically-acclaimed show, directed live on-stage every night by Rachel, who’s learning disabled and lives in a care home. 

Our vision for the tour was always that it wouldn’t just be about the show - that we’d offer a menu of wraparound activities to each place we visited. We wanted to get venues talking and thinking about what would best serve their communities, and create opportunities to work with new groups. We wanted our stays in each city to be as full and rich and connected as possible. 

To each venue, we suggested:

• Perfect Worlds Workshops - for community groups: replicating how we step into Rachel’s world in Perfect Show, a chance for people to lead the creation of their own ‘perfect world’. We’ve worked nationwide with Learning Disabled artists in the role of ‘The Director’.

• Improv for Social Change - for artist networks and youth theatres: learning how principles of improvisation can be applied to create radical social and political change. 

• Neurodiversity Awareness Training - for venue staff: practical tips for how to support neurodivergent colleagues and audiences. 

• Post-show Q&As - for audiences: it’s the kind of show that people want to talk about, and the kind of show that connects people with similar lived experiences. 

Different venues made different choices, and asked for tweaks in content or structure to suit the groups they wanted to support.

Hannah (Zoo Co's Access Officer) with participants during the Perfect Worlds workshop with the Burton Street Foundation in Sheffield

Some of our work started long before the tour set off; in 2025 we spent a sunny July in Sheffield, working on Improv skills with a group of performers with additional needs, prepping for a hilarious sharing at Launchpad Festival on the famous Crucible stage.   

Other sessions were carefully timed so that groups could come and see the show whilst working with us. Sick! Introduced us to SMASH in their North Manchester neighbourhood, Birmingham Rep introduced us to Open Theatre, and Sheffield Theatres introduced us to the Burton Street Foundation in Hillsborough. Justin, a Manager at Burton Street said: ‘At Burton Street we use creativity to help improve people's confidence, communication and self expression. To put the clients in total control in such a fun and creative way really put this front and centre. They had loads of fun and it was inspiring for them to see that someone with Learning Difficulties could be a director of a show. It was also really inspiring for the staff involved and they left with new and innovative ideas for facilitating workshops and sessions.’

Perfect Worlds is a good format for neurodivergent young people - we’ve worked with an Addington SEN school in our hometown of Croydon before (in 2022), and we were keen to try this again on tour. The Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch connected us with Koru Academy, an Alternative Provision Unit in Romford. We visited for 3 sessions across 3 weeks in January, working with students between Years 8 and 10. All came to see the show - for some of them it was their first time in a theatre. As a result of our time with them, one of their students has joined the Youth Theatre at QTH on a bursary place. 

We were delighted to have Rose Bruford student Maya on placement with us - she’s originally from Sheffield, so joined us to support Improv workshops at the Queen’s Theatre and Sheffield Theatres - you can  read her reflections (and see her beautiful sketches) here. 

In Oxford we were lucky enough to have a videographer with us for our time at KEEN, making this short documentary. Andrew, a KEEN Trustee and family member said ‘Saturday's drama

workshop was fantastic! Can't thank you enough for such a stimulating, energetic and

fun day. The level of focus and engagement from every single one of the group including two who have never been to any KEEN drama session before says it all… It was clever, thought-provoking and everything you said to expect and more!’ KEEN brought a large group along to the show and it was great to catch up with them afterwards. 

Flo (Zoo Co's Artistic Director) and participant at the Burton Street Foundation.

In each workshop, the delivery of Perfect Worlds looks different. One director might really love using similar technology to Rachel to direct the show - a desk full of their own buttons, costumes, menus to choose what should happen next. In other spaces, we’ve taken the essence of what we have learnt working with Rachel, and applied it using different modalities for directors who want or need to communicate their leadership differently - non-verbally, through movement, sensory experience, or working with photographs and memories to stage real or imagined parts of the director's life. In each setting, the whole group - us, participants, facilitators, carers, volunteers and family members, have been invited together to step into new worlds by the directors we have met - worlds we are richer for having visited. 

We’d like to say thank you to everyone who trusted us in our travels around the country - it was wonderful to spend time with you - you made it a richer and more rewarding tour than we could have thought possible. 

The numbers:

Warwick Arts Centre	Neurodiversity Awareness Training with 17 staff
Contact Theatre and Sick!	Neurodiversity Awareness Training with 11 staff
	Perfect Worlds workshop with SMASH in Harpurhey (8 participants)
	Improv for Social Change with 7 people from Contact’s artist network
Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch	Three Perfect Worlds workshops with 7 students from Koru Academy in Romford
	Improv for Social Change with 28 Youth Theatre members
	Neurodiversity Awareness Training with 21 staff
Sheffield Theatres	Seven Improv skills sessions with 5 participants from their Launchpad group, leading up to a sharing as part of Launchpad Festival 2025
	Two Perfect Worlds workshops with the Burton Street Foundation (21 participants)
	Neurodiversity Awareness Training with 11 staff.
	Improv for Social Change with 7 local artists and separately with 38 Youth Theatre members
Birmingham Rep	Improv for Social Change with Open Theatre at TouchBase Pears in Selly Oak (12 participants).
Oxford Playhouse	Perfect Worlds workshop with KEEN (22 participants).
Leeds Playhouse	Two Perfect Worlds workshops with their Buzz group (16 participants)
	Neurodiversity Awareness Training with 23 staff.

Across the tour, that’s 83 venue staff trained in Neurodiversity Awareness, 97 people experiencing Improv for Social Change, and 74 people enjoying Perfect Worlds. 

And many many more who joined us for post-show Q&As, and post-post-show Q&As in the bar afterwards!

Zoo Co and Improbable are hugely grateful to Arts Council England, Esmee Fairbairn, Garfield Weston and the Unity Theatre Trust for their support of this work. 

We hope and plan that Perfect Worlds will continue to be a core offer of ours, in Croydon and nationally. We’re actively seeking opportunities to share our practice with partners who can work with us to scale this work - get in touch with Flo and Amy if you’d like to talk to us about the work.