The Chocolate Plant:
A story our appetites and how they've shaped the world.
A new drama documentary for the stage written by Bea Roberts and directed by Anna Farthing.
Marking each birthday from our first to our last, Christmas, Easter, friendships, holidays, gifts from lovers and snacks on busses our lives are lived through chocolate. The Chocolate Plant is a new documentary drama for stage chronicling the rise and fall of Quaker chocolate makers. Exploring the stories beneath the wrappers we’ll discover how they revolutionised the world, changing our tastes, our waistlines and the face of global trade forever. Melting interviews with archive footage, animation, music, storytelling and even the odd graph, The Chocolate Plant follows the fate of one factory dramatically imagining the age old dance of employers and employees stretching from 1728 to 2011. From Quakers to Kraft we’ll unpick our chocolate landscape today, work out how we got here and where we might go next.
This is the story of Bristol, of Liverpool, of York, London, Manchester, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Auckland, Poland, Ghana, India, Russia, France, Malaysia, Sweden, Canada and Keynsham. A story of radical change and beloved heritage, innovation and identity, philanthropy and slavery. A story for anyone who has ever eaten chocolate.
