Share the Love Campaign
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Throughout our Spring 2026 tour of Ruby’s Worry we are raising funds to ‘share the love’ of live music and theatre. If you’ve loved our production could you donate a small amount to help us bring our shows to audiences who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity? £10 would pay for a fully subsidised ticket for a child attending our Autumn production of Strange Creatures. Or £20 would pay for five children to attend one of our at-school performances of Fishing for Haiku. |
Ruby’s Worry Programme Notes
We hope you have enjoyed our production of Ruby’s Worry. We’ve loved sharing this wonderful show with you and have compiled some further information on the music, the composers, the company, and the author – a kind of inside, sneaky peak at the details of the production!
If you could also spare 5 minutes to complete our audience survey your feedback would be extremely helpful for us.
About the story:
Ruby’s Worry is written and illustrated by Tom Percival and is part of his Big Bright Feelings picture book series exploring different emotions. You can find out more about Tom here. We are thrilled to be able to bring Ruby’s story to life within our magical musical world. We feel music is the perfect way to explore Ruby’s story and here, our director Hannah, shares her inspiration in putting the story on stage.
About the music:
The music you heard in the performance was in a range of styles and written by many different composers. You’ll find a playlist below so you can listen to the pieces again in your own time.
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About the composers:
All the music you have heard today has been written by a composer. The musicians then memorise the music; which is how they play it without reading the notes! Most of the composers we have featured are alive today, but some of them lived many hundreds of years ago. Our Musical Director, Sophie, is going to tell you about a couple of her favourites:
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Caroline Shaw is a living American composer (who also sings and plays the violin, like Charlotte). Her piece, “Limestone and Felt” for viola and cello, is one of the most unusual and moving pieces we’ve found. It begins with the cello and viola having a conversation by plucking the same note at each other (D), sometimes snapping the string to make it louder. When we finally use our bows, we play notes together in the same rhythm, creating a sparse and haunting tune. |
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Duncan Strachan is a living Scottish composer (who also plays the cello, like Sophie). We chose some of his piece “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” to be a key element in our show. We use it to represent Ruby’s feelings of worry, with tiny parts of it popping up in other pieces too, whenever the worry shows up briefly. We thought it was perfect because it has fast, repeating notes that go from excited but uneasy to very dramatic, just like the worry. This piece feels epic to us, even though it only uses two string instruments; it almost sounds like electronic dance music. |
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Jessie Montgomery is another living American composer who also plays the violin! We love the wildness of her duo for violin and cello which we thought perfect for when the Worry is really taking over. She has written all types of fantastic music with multicultural New York influences. She plays in a violin/double bass duo called Big Dog Little Dog and composes for the Sphynx Organisation who support African American and Latino string players. She was also a founder of the PUBLIQuartet who’s version of O Quamsuavis est Domine spiritus tuus (by another woman, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani) inspired us to use that piece in our show too. |
About the design:
Not only does Tom Percival write amazing stories, he is also the most wonderful illustrator; so in putting Ruby’s Worry on the stage the design was really important. You’ll find many of the characters in Tom’s book have made it onto our stage. Our designer, Erin, is going to show us one of them.
Ruby’s Worry is made possible because of our wonderful performers and creative team. You can find out more about the company below:
Ruby’s Worry was originally created in 2024 by MishMash Productions in partnership with Nottingham City Libraries with support from Inspire: Culture, Learning and Libraries; Leicestershire Libraries and funding from Arts Council England.
With support from
