The commute from page to stage: Writing The Buxton Faun

For any writer, the transition from the pages of a notebook to the public stage can seem quite daunting. For Susie Bennett, winner of Buxton Opera House’s local scriptwriting competition, seeing her play The Buxton Faun come to life at the Pavilion Arts Centre began with a mix of nerves and wonder. Reflecting on the early rehearsals, she admits that the experience was initially intimidating. "I thought it was going to be embarrassing at first because I’d never really had that before," she says about having actors perform the word she’d written. "For the first ten minutes I sat there like ‘oh no, oh no, oh no’ and then it started to come to life, and I started to really enjoy it."

That process was guided by the expertise of dramaturg Charles Way, the playwright behind The Vanishing Elephant, which the Opera House staged in 2025. The pair worked on the script over a weekend of workshopping, an experience Bennett found transformative. "I found it really, really wonderful; he’s been so lovely to work with. I just felt like I was in really good hands, because he knew how to get a play to work on the stage, so I just trusted him straight away really." Through a combination of live readings with actors and follow-up emails, the script evolved from a competition-winning entry into a fully realised stage production. "We looked at how we needed to change it for the stage and what developments were needed, it was a really interesting process."

The inspiration for the play is rooted in the unique, often unpredictable character of Buxton itself. Having moved to the area from Cambridge, Bennett was immediately struck by the dramatic shift in climate compared to her childhood home in Chesterfield. "The difference between here and Chesterfield is really astonishing," she laughs. "I have adjusted on one level but my husband really has moaned and moaned, and there have been many points where I wished I had a Buxton Faun that I could call on to come and deal with my husband!" This domestic humour combines with the reality of living in a town where local expertise is everything. "When we were doing up our house and needed people to come and do various things, we would say ‘we need an electrician’ and someone would say to you, 'right, you need this person, he’s the Buxton electrician.' It was like they were our options - we had the various Buxton people - and I thought from that, we need a Buxton Faun."

The magic and charm of the production is also a love letter to the Peak District landscape. Bennett points to her old commute from Chesterfield as the atmospheric catalyst for the play’s fairy-tale feel. "When you come back at the A6 on that road where you sort of start to go uphill and you go through a forest, it’s really like entering another world. Often the weather changes; you go from bright sunshine to suddenly snowing or there’s an enormous amount of fog." These "stunning" local spots, from the woods along the A6 to the hills around Corbar Cross and Solomon’s Temple, provide the backdrop for a story that feels uniquely "rooted" in the town.

For Bennett, the Pavilion Arts Centre is the ideal home for such a community-driven story, following in the footsteps of previous community productions like Keeper of the Books (2024) and One Night in Buxton (2025). She notes that while the Opera House is an internationally recognized venue that hosts famous names, its strength lies in its connection to its "unusual and quirky" home. "I think historically Buxton got cut off every winter! So I think people are incredibly self-reliant and very friendly and very welcoming," she says. Having her work premiered by such an iconic institution has already proven to be a professional springboard; Bennett was recently accepted into the East Midlands Writers' Group, where she will be mentored as she develops a novel. "I think one of the reasons I was accepted to do that is because I’m doing this play," she explains. "Having my play premiered here... has been absolutely amazing. When I say to people I’m having a play and they ask where and I say, 'oh well, it’s being done by the Opera House,' everybody knows it and everybody loves it. It’s just been wonderful."

The Buxton Faun plays at the Pavilion Arts Centre Sat 31 Jan – Sun 1 Feb.