Having been both an actor and composer, it wasn’t until he hit thirty that Keith Saha tried his hand at directing and writing. “I was an actor for ten years did lots of different kinds of theatre. I never imagined I’d get to write or direct, it felt like it was a bit of a closed door” Saha explained.

“It was when I hit thirty I just thought, I want to start creating my own work, so me and my partner started up our own company to do it. Contact Theatre had a course as well for black and Asian directors, I was on that and I learned a lot from that, but the ten years of me learning from a lot of different directors and writers, that was my training ground and that was invaluable”.

Having made a name for himself in both acting and composing, Saha has become an acclaimed director making work for young audiences. “I’m happy with what I’m doing. Expressing myself creatively and helping someone else find their stories, when I work with young writers, with 20 Stories High, there are a lot of young people that are writing, and I help them develop their stories, I get a buzz from that”.

It’s not without its difficulties however, “I think there is a cultural challenge first of all. What young people think theatre is, I think that is the boundary. We’ve been working with the art forms that young people are already experts with, we do a lot of hip hop theatre, so when we start collaborating with young people the first stage is having a jam and just creating art and from that the stories get made and it suddenly becomes theatre”.

Saha explains the journey behind making The Broke ’n’ Beat Collective: “One our first shows we did was called Babul and the blue bear. I took some masks and puppets and hip hop artists and that had a real impact on the audience, it felt like something unique that worked. I realised that was the tip of the iceberg and ever since then I’ve been trying to find what that relationship between the two art forms is.”

Following up with that, Saha explained the premise of the show, “the concept is it’s a hip hop gig, we’ve got four artists, a poet/singer-songwriter, a beat boxer, a puppeteer and a break dancer, all specialists in their own fields. The experience will be like you’re going to a gig and you’re seeing this amazing band and making great hip-hop music and then objects starts to get manipulated. The stories that are told through the songs, they start to tell themselves through puppetry, the characters in the songs start to come to life on stage in surprising ways”.

The show is about expressing the difficulties of society for young people in today’s world, coming directly from the young people as Saha explained: “We asked them the questions of what’s difficult about being a young person in 2015. It’s their stories that come to the surface. The common thread was dissatisfaction with the state and government and the education system”.

“There needs to be hope, it’s something I want people to take away, we go to some quite dark places, some difficult and challenging stories, when we explore all these themes and issues there needs to be some hope, no matter how small. I want people to walk away thinking, yes I recognise those stories, I haven’t seen them being done on the stage or that way before, it’s a new prospective but also think something can be done”.

Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective is playing at various theatres on tour until the April 2.