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Performances for autistic people | August 2025

A performer in a black dress is dramatically splashed with water on stage, reacting with surprise and intensity, while musicians play guitar and accordion in the dimly lit background.

Twelfth Night

"Beautiful and intense"

Audience Member

A woman with curly hair sits cross-legged on stage, holding a flower and a gourd flask, smiling brightly with one hand playfully covering part of her face.
A musician kneels under a spotlight, lifting a trumpet high above their head, casting a large, dramatic shadow on the stage floor.
A woman in a black outfit stands beside a figure draped completely in a white sheet like a ghost, lit by a bright stage light behind them.
A performer in a black dress is dramatically splashed with water on stage, reacting with surprise and intensity, while musicians play guitar and accordion in the dimly lit background.

Previous Performances

Teatro La Veleta, Almagro, Spain, 2017

Martin Sorescu National Theatre Studio. Craiova International Shakespeare Festival, Romania, April 2018

Teatrul Nottara, Bucharest Romania, April 2018

Bonnington Square Square Gardens, Open Garden Square Weekend London, June 2018

Neuss Globe Shakespeare Festival, June 2018

Minerva Theatre Chichester, January 2019

Adapted and Directed by Kelly Hunter

Lighting Designer Jenny Roxburgh

Music Tom Chapman

Trailer for Flute Theatre's production of Twelfth Night (2018)

A performer holds a red cord and gourd above another actor dressed in black, who leans back dramatically with a red cloth draped around them, evoking a sense of tension and struggle.
Kelly Hunter

"In his masterpiece, If this is a man, Primo Levi has a chapter named The Drowned and The Saved. In it, he tells us not of those who were literally saved from the gas chambers but rather those whose cellular attitude to life, their “bounce”, seemed to save them moment to moment. Shakespeare drowns Ophelia (his tragic young female protagonist) at the end of Hamlet, and he saves Viola (his comic young female protagonist) from drowning at the beginning of 12th Night. He wrote both plays around the same time. At the end of my production of Hamlet, Ophelia clung to a long ribbon of material – the length of the stage - walking as the ghost of her drowned self, haunting Laertes. At the beginning of my Twelfth Night, the same actress who had played Ophelia was again walking as if in death, but thirty seconds into the play a clown splashes her with a bucket of cold water, the carnival music begins, and she is saved. I understood Twelfth Night as the necessary “bounce back” from Hamlet, music is the food of love, and we must play on."

Founder & Director

Kelly Hunter

A diverse group of performers energetically engage in a live Flute Theatre performance, using expressive gestures and movement on a dimly lit stage. The actors wear casual, comfortable clothing in natural tones, creating an inclusive and accessible environment tailored for autistic individuals. This performance, inspired by Shakespeare and adapted using the Hunter Heartbeat Method, highlights Flute Theatre’s commitment to neurodiverse storytelling. Audience members can be seen watching with interest in the background. Flute Theatre also offers training and courses for actors, educators, applied theatre students, and families to support autism-friendly performance practices.

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