TOP G'S LIKE ME Comes to Royal & Derngate, Northampton

Royal & Derngate, Northampton will present the world premiere of Top G's Like Me, a brand new play by Samson Hawkins (Village Idiot) directed by Artistic Director Jesse Jones (Education, Education, Education). The production will ask big questions of the online space and how it influences young minds, inside an auditorium totally transformed to reflect Northampton's Radlands skatepark.  At a time when the national conversation turns more and more to how we understand and protect our children online, the theatre is staging the production with an ambition that thousands of young people will see it, with specific initiatives to target the student population. 

 

The groundbreaking new work, which will open next Spring, follows a group of rudderless young adults in a post-playground world of seething toxic masculinity, misogyny and questions around consent. It centres on the sometimes dangerous, coercive, relationships that young people can have with digital algorithms and with influential figures who curry ideological favour with people on the cusp of adulthood, getting to them via the quick endorphins and short-cut culture of poisonous social media.  

 

Jesse Jones, Artistic Director, Royal & Derngate, Northampton said: “In our classrooms, online, and on our streets some young people are having ever more misogynistic and extremist views that are parroted verbatim from online personalities. We know that it is ever more difficult for young people to escape the grasp of this manipulation as they are only ever one swipe away from it.  

 

As the online safety bill establishes in the coming year and parent power begins to move the dial on social media companies' accountability towards the safety of children and young people online, this play is a crucial comment on the challenges young people face, rooted in the heart of Northampton. We are putting this show on in our larger space, the Derngate, and want our auditorium and building to be full of up to 900 young people per show.”

 

Top G's Like Me will create conversations with young people and engage with them directly. In addition to reaching students across the county through the many performances, the production will continue discussions in classrooms with an ambitious programme of participatory sessions. Designed to help teachers address the negative effects of social media in a more urgent and dynamic way, Royal & Derngate's comprehensive Beyond the Stage programme offers a series of Q&A sessions along with workshops on online safety advice and creative process.

 

Accompanying the production there will also be an installation and workshop titled Street Art, Street Culture, Activism and Social Change which will see Royal & Derngate work with community groups to create 360 pieces of street art which will form a gallery within the theatre and throughout Northampton's community and online spaces.

 

Recognising the need for the play to be received as widely as possible and the significance of the reach of its themes, Royal & Derngate have launched an open auditions process for the lead role in Top G's Like Me. Anyone is welcome to apply for the role, regardless of professional experience.

 

Top G's Like Me was originally seed funded and developed through Generate, Royal & Derngate's artist development programme, in partnership with Andy Routledge. It runs Friday 20 February to Saturday 7 March 2026.

 

The production is part of the theatre's Made in Northampton season, which is sponsored locally by Michael Jones Jeweller. 

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