esc films grew out of the Educational Shakespeare Company (ESC), co-founded in Belfast in 1999 by Tom Magill and Andrew Stocker. The company began when Michael Bogdanov, director of the English Shakespeare Company, invited Tom, his assistant director, to set up a Belfast branch delivering Shakespeare workshops in schools. Bogdanov became ESC’s first patron.
Our work has been deeply shaped by Augusto Boal, the Brazilian activist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder of Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal made Tom his representative in Northern Ireland and was ESC’s patron from 2003 until his death in 2009. His aim of empowering “passive spectators to become active performers in the rehearsal for change in their own lives” still sits at the heart of what we do.
FROM STAGE TO SCREEN
ESC’s early work focused on cross-community storytelling. In 2003, Peace II funding allowed us to move into film-making, recording our work on conflict resolution through the performing arts.
Alongside this, we spent many years working creatively in Northern Ireland’s prisons, using drama, storytelling and theatre. Highlights include:
The Crime of Castlereagh – Tom Magill’s stage production of Bobby Sands’ epic poem, performed by former prisoners from Long Kesh/The Maze, which premièred in Belfast in 1995–96.
Mickey B – a world first: a feature film made inside a maximum-security prison, HMP Maghaberry, with serving prisoners as the cast. Created by Tom Magill and Simon Wood over two years (2005–07), this modern adaptation of Macbeth has been translated into seven languages and screened worldwide. Read more about Mickey B.
THERAPEUTIC FILM-MAKING
After seeing Mickey B, the Northern Trust’s Community and Forensic Mental Health Team invited us to work with their clients at Holywell Hospital. This opened a new strand of therapeutic film-making with people with severe and enduring mental health issues who had been involved in crime. Under our flagship Second Chance for Change programme, this work has grown to include people with learning disabilities, and both men and women. See examples of this work.
ESC FILMS TODAY
As our focus widened from criminal justice to mental health more broadly, we rebranded as esc films in 2018.
Today we work across all three prisons in Northern Ireland, delivering accredited expressive writing and storytelling programmes to men, women and transgender people in custody. Our programmes, Snakes & Ladders for men and Unboxing Women for women, combine group work with one-to-one coaching, yoga, breathwork and somatic sessions.
We continue to respond to the social issues of our time, and are currently working with Women’s Aid on survivor-led podcasts around Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG).