An application to redevelop the play Killing Roger , which deals with the biomedical and ethical issues raised by terminal illness, in order to take it to Edinburgh and Bedford Fringe Festivals in July and August 2013. (360G-Wellcome-101353_Z_13_Z)

Sparkle and Dark's Travelling Players are a professional theatre company. We are applying to The Wellcome Trust in order to take our new show Killing Roger to Bedford Festival Fringe and then onto Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Could you kill someone Billy? I mean really, could you? What if they asked you to? Billy, a conscientious, opinionated teenager, recounts his weekly visits to Roger, a chain smoking, chair-ridden, sharp tongued old man. An unlik ely friendship forms and soon young Billy must decide what it means to truly care about someone. Rapidly, levels of reality distort and shift as we delve through Rogers Memories and Billys troubled mind. New writing by award winning company Sparkle and Dark, using puppetry and a live soundscape. a young theatre company with great promise The Stage, 2012 At the heart of Killing Roger is the debate: 'the right to die' which deals with the biomedical and ethical issues raised by terminal il lness and the success of biomedical science in increasing human longevity. By taking Killing Roger to these festivals we will engage audiences with the issues surrounding this debate. Killing Roger will be premi red in March at Little Angel Theatre, the home of British puppetry. Funding from the Wellcome Trust will allow us to redevelop the show after its premiere and to take to the festivals, so that we can engage as large an audience as possible.