I was invited to join last night’s RESET event by BOLD Elephant’s Tuesday Night Group.
Celebrating its third birthday, the group meets weekly to rehearse and improvise, and this is only the second time it has opened the process to an audience. What began as a group of 10 has now grown to 300 members.
Part scratch night and part live redirection exercise, RESET assigns pairs or trios of actors to perform a scene. While they work on the material in the half-hour before curtain-up, the audience contributes suggestions to two boxes: “During this scene, you must…” and “One of you has just…”.
Billed as “13 actors. 1 night. 6 scenes. 2 takes”, RESET provides a valuable opportunity for emerging performers to explore their craft in a supportive environment. The audience brings warmth to the room while helping to shape the second version of each scene.
How RESET Works
Each scene, drawn from a play, film or television script, is introduced with its title and author. The actors perform the scene once before explaining the context: who the characters are and what situation they are in.
Two suggestions are then drawn from each box and put to a vote by the audience. The actors can choose whether to incorporate the selected options and may also opt for a “Red Button” direction note from dramaturg Georgia Goggin. A second version of the scene is then performed.
What impressed me most was how readily the actors adapted to unexpected prompts, whether that meant incorporating Jeremy Kyle squats, becoming distracted by a fly, or playing children pretending to be adults.
With one performer absent through illness, 2025 Oxford School of Drama graduate Gia Imo was selected from a box of Post-it notes submitted by those interested in joining the group. She also took on the role of the evening’s recurring “Red Button” persona.
Scene Highlights
One Day – David Nicholls
The first scene came from One Day by David Nicholls. Madeleine Price and Elly Roberts played two friends whose past one-night stand continues to complicate their relationship when one of them finds love elsewhere.
Price’s character was dealing with defective laser surgery, while Roberts incorporated the Jeremy Kyle squats. Both performers handled the additions skilfully, finding humour without losing sight of the emotional core of the scene.
Conversations After Sex – Mark O’Halloran
Ferdinand McKay and Aiyana Bartlett performed a scene from Conversations After Sex by Mark O’Halloran. Familiar with the play, I knew the context: he had died and returned to check on her.
The pair chose the Red Button option, which reimagined the characters as siblings whose movements had to mirror one another. The physical challenge added a more anarchic energy to the scene while unexpectedly heightening its poignancy.
Walden – Amy Berryman
Scene three featured Catriona Stirling, Charlie James-Howard and Charlotte Blackwood in Amy Berryman’s Walden, which enjoyed a brief West End run as theatres emerged from pandemic closures.
The story centres on two sisters from a NASA family, one of whom returns from space to meet the other’s fiancé. The audience voted for “one of you has just seen your parents f**k”, and a distraction involving a fly, but the Red Button replaced the first suggestion with a scenario in which the returning astronaut lies to conceal a relationship with the man she has just met.
James-Howard made excellent use of both additions, repeatedly swatting the imaginary insect while reacting sharply whenever Stirling spoke. The trio demonstrated a clear understanding of both the source material and the RESET format.
Palm Springs – Andy Siara and Max Barbakow
After the interval, Eoin Sweeney and Lisa Vetta entered the time-loop world of Palm Springs by Andy Siara and Max Barbakow. I vaguely remembered the film’s premise of two people trapped in the same cycle for years.
Audience suggestions required Vetta’s character to discover they were related, while Sweeney had to avoid using the word “the”.
It would have been interesting to see both actors attempt the language challenge, but Sweeney handled it well. Meanwhile, Vetta’s barely concealed disgust in the second take provided a notable contrast to the more relaxed tone of the original scene.
Almost, Maine – John Cariani
The fifth scene featured Kieran Robson alongside audience recruit Gia Imo in Almost, Maine by John Cariani. The scene follows a couple after an ice-skating trip, with one partner forgetting an anniversary.
The pair accepted suggestions involving an infectious disease and “they have had breath”, alongside the Red Button option of children play-acting adulthood. Their ease and connection were particularly impressive given how recently they had met.
Schitt’s Creek – Kevin White and Daniel Levy
The evening concluded with a scene from Schitt’s Creek by Kevin White and Daniel Levy. Ronan Quiniou and Henry Alexander Bryan presented two distinctly different interpretations, swapping roles between takes and demonstrating just how much a scene can change through performance choices alone.
Closing Thoughts
I really enjoyed the opportunity to explore RESET’s work and would recommend you check it out when they announce their next event.
The atmosphere at BOLD Elephant was buzzing from the start for this evening’s event. All money raised from the door charges (starting at £5 with ‘Pay It Forward’ options) and bar sales goes back to the venue, allowing them to continue their mission.
BOLD Theatre Mission
“To create original new work and provide other artists with space & support to create new work. BOLD Theatre offers makers the freedom to play, experiment, and take creative risks, through our mentoring, new writing & devising development projects, residencies, affordable hires and creative hire schemes.
BOLD Theatre is the destination for emerging and mid-career artists who might not feel they have a home: we don’t gate-keep; we don’t ghost. Or at least, we do our very best not to.
Operating from a three-storey building in the heart of London’s Elephant & Castle, BOLD Theatre is integral in finding the future original voices of the contemporary theatre scene.”
You can find out more about BOLD Theatre and donate to them at their website. The work of RESET can be followed on their Instagram page.
Photo credit: Tim Romanchuk