About

“You've got to have the past but you can't get pulled back by it. You need something pushing you forward.” 

Plague has hit the world, wiping out most of the human population. Three teenagers from Bradford are among the few survivors: Harvinder, Nusrat and Alleyne.

A love of Sci-fi and local history led Bradford writer Tajinder Singh Hayer, in 2016, to imagine a post apocalypse world for his play North Country. The disaster he imagined was a plague - a pandemic ... survived by three teenagers from different cultural backgrounds - a farmer, a weaver and a medic - who together negotiate a rebuilding of community over the next 40 years.

Here, in 2026, we have survived a COVID pandemic Tajinder never saw coming and we are reviving his play as the centrepiece of a new writing project in which themes of the local, the remembered past and the imagined future will provide inspiration for a series of workshops alongside the production. Tajinder still teaches creative writing at Lancaster University and is sharing his approach to North Country as part of this invitation to Imagine Ilkley.

The play is ultimately optimistic but contains some strong language, with descriptions of violence, sickness and death.