New Dorset-based play coming to Weymouth College ahead of London run

An evocative and compelling new play, set on a Dorset hillfort, will be coming to The Bay Theatre in Weymouth ahead of its London premiere.

It’s 1am on an Iron Age hillfort in North Dorset, where 15-year-old best friends, Viv and Daisy, wait for a ghost. Away from dysfunctional families and small-town gossip, up on the Fort, Viv and Daisy can be entirely themselves. With so much beyond their control, this is their stomping ground, their escape… until the ghost turns up.

Tabitha Hayward started writing ‘Fort’ on train journeys between Dorset and the Royal Court Theatre in London, where she was the only non-Londoner on a playwriting course.

“Everyone says ‘write what you know’, and I’d always thought that was way too boring for me,” said Tabby, “until I realised no one else had grown up in a town with a Cheese Festival, or knew what a hillfort was, and that all the stuff which I’d found boring and frustrating as a kid was actually hilarious and brilliant and kind of moving.”

The result is a beautiful snapshot of rural adolescence, recently shortlisted for Masterclass’ Pitch Your Play prize.

Funded by Arts Council England, ‘Fort’ is Dorsetborn’s latest production, following 2023’s ‘Georgia and the Iceberg’ and ‘Pride’.

Director Rohan Gotobed, who has spent much of this year working at Badbury Rings Hillfort, said: “This play deserves to be seen – to be heard – to be experienced. It’s a genuine South West success story; having been developed through Poole Lighthouse’s Sanctuary Programme, Taunton Brewhouse’s Summer School, and The Script’s the Thing Festival in Dorchester, ‘Fort’ shows what can be achieved by local artists in collaboration with supportive organisations. We can’t wait for audiences to meet Viv and Daisy.”

Dorsetborn will be touring Dorset and Hampshire ahead of a limited run at Theatre 503 in London. This will include a performance at The Bay Theatre at Weymouth College on Wednesday 20^th November at 7.30pm. Tickets are now available from £11 at

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/thebaytheatre or call the box office on 01305 208702.

You can also find more upcoming event at The Bay Theatre here: The Bay Theatre – Weymouth College