Roles:

• Hansel
• Grethel
• Father
• Stepmother
• Cousin of Stepmother

The following resources are included in each performance license:

• Permission to photocopy the PDF script for your production so there is no additional cost for these assets.

The following resources may be added to you license for an additional fee:

• Logo/Media package

Charles began writing plays professionally in 1978 when he joined Leeds Playhouse TIE team. He has now written over forty plays, many of them for young people, and his work has been produced all over the world. These include Sleeping Beauty, The Search for Odysseus and A Spell of Cold Weather - which were all nominated as Best Children's Play by the Writer's Guild of Great Britain. He has recently published his 'Classic fairytales, retold for the stage' which includes Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, which were specially commissioned by The Library Theatre Manchester. His play about the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, which was first produced at the Polka Theatre for Children, was nominated as Best Children's Show by the TMA. Other plays include The Flood, Red Red Shoes, One Snowy Night The Tinderbox and The Night Before Christmas. . He was recently commissioned by the National Theatre to write Alice in the News, which children all over Britain have performed. Charles has won several awards and was last years recipient of the 'Children's award' given by the Arts Council of England for 'Red Red Shoes' as best play for young people 2004. His play 'Merlin and the Cave of Dreams', for Imagination Stage, was nominated for a Helen Hayes award for the 'Outstanding New Play of 2004'.

Charles' plays for adults include a well-known version of Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill and an adaptation of Independent People by Halldor Laxness. In Wales he has had long associations with Gwent Theatre, The Sherman theatre and Hijinx Theatre, for whom he has written' In the Bleak Midwinter, and Ill Met by Moonlight, both set on the welsh borders. Recent new plays include, Still life, about genetic science for The Plymouth Theatre Royal; The Long Way Home, for New Perspectives Theatre in collaboration with the CIAO festival, which has been performed in Croatia and The Dutiful Daughter which has been performed in China. Charles has written many plays for radio, and a TV poem for BBC2, No Borders, set on the Welsh borders, where he lives and has spent most of his creative life.

Originally co-commissioned by Theatr lolo and Germany's Theater Consol in 2009.

Winner of the 2010 German Children's Theatre Award

A note from the playwright

“Consol Theater in Gelsenkirchen, Germany were performing one of my plays, Red Red Shoes at a festival in Berlin and I was very impressed by the quality of the production which won several awards. The director, Andrea Kramer felt the play gave a director ‘room to move’ – and would be interested in working with me on a new project. She spoke of her desire to address the issue of ‘poverty’ since there is a great deal of ‘poverty’ in the district where her theatre is. A region, not unlike parts of South Wales with a collapsed mining industry.

“I returned to Britain, and began to think of stories I knew about poverty, and ‘Hansel and Grethel’ came to mind. At the time, the tragic episode of Karen and Shannon Matthews was under discussion in the media and the family were described as ‘the new poor’. I began to address, not the ‘issue’ of poverty but the ’question’ of poverty. What is it in a country where almost everyone has their basic needs met? I then began to merge the story of Hansel and Grethel with several real life stories from across Europe where emotional poverty had led to dramatic incidents, and ‘Missing’ or ‘Looking for Grethel’ came into being. I wanted to write a text that allows a director ‘room to move’ – and as a consequence it is not written in the style of an ordinary play. The director and actors can decide who say which lines. The play has a storytelling quality but can be performed in a very physical way.”