Common/Wealth Brings PUBLIC INTEREST to Loading Bay

Common/Wealth, Bradford’s political theatre pioneers has announced their new, ambitious large-scale show alongside its full cast. Part-club night, part-political theatre, this urgent, immersive production asks how we challenge the narratives spun about young working-class people in 2025. 

Public Interest confronts structural racist and classist discrimination within the justice system by exploring real-life cases of Joint Enterprise, a legal concept used to charge and convict people who may have played no direct part in a crime. A cast of rappers and DJs tell their stories on their own terms using drill, grime and bassline – the very music so often weaponised against them.

Staged in the basement of Bradford 2025's new pop-up venue Loading Bay, a disused city-centre warehouse, and featuring projections, cinematic lighting and basslines you can feel in your bones, Public Interest is a vital and vivid call to action.

Director Evie Manning said: “We hope that Public Interest helps shift the dial on the globally entrenched 'tough on crime' doctrine and supports audiences to have complex nuanced discussions about how we might challenge  the systems we've inherited. 

“Public Interest is a high-energy, high production value show and we hope it activates young people to both see their own creative potential and speak out about injustice and feel they have the power to make change. At Common/Wealth we're idealists, it's why we keep making and sharing experimental performance and we hope that Public Interest will speak to an international conversation about the justice system and youth culture in a fun and direct way.

“We’re excited to work with a cast of DJs, rappers and musicians because  their craft is all about telling an alternate story to the stories you might hear in court and the media.” 

Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director, Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, said: “We are thrilled to be collaborating with the brilliant Common/Wealth to present this new commission for Bradford 2025. Asking vital questions about how societal institutions treat young people, this new production promises to be both a call to action and a truly immersive theatrical experience with real stories at its heart. Taking place in the basement space in our pop-up venue Loading Bay, where the action will happen all around the audience, Public Interest brings underground vibes and urgent questions vividly to the fore.”