ELLIE Parker of New Theatre Works admits to being on a continual quest for new theatrical forms and the company's most recent project certainly fit the bill.

New Theatre Works, resident company at The Courtyard, has recently returned from Sri Lanka, where they toured a play-in-a-day, What to Do, developed from research in the country and centred on environmental issues such as recycling and the human-elephant conflict.

Inspired by her voluntary work with the charity Funforlife after the tsunami, Ellie assembled a British and Asian team of professional actors to devise workshops and a performance that would tour schools in Herefordshire, Birmingham and southern Sri Lanka.

"It was surprising how little the play had to change from the UK to Sri Lanka as it was designed to be very physical," said Ellie. "It did help though having a fluent Sinhala speaker in the cast to correct our pronunciation."

In each school, up to 60 children learned theatre skills to become circus performers, jungle animals and to explore the issues involved in the play before joining the cast for the rehearsed performance.

"I have always wanted to make theatre work in odd places," says Elllie. "I am not so excited about theatre buildings. Unless theatre is intimate and you see expressions, you lose everything."

The excitement created by the project extended beyond its participants, when two members of the British Council made a six-and-a-half hour journey to see the work.

"As a result they have asked us to submit a proposal for conflict resolution theatre work in the Tamil refugee camps," explains Ellie. "As far as I know, no other British theatre company has attempted anything quite so ambitious. There is a huge appetite for communicating ideas through participatory theatre."

Arts Council England funded the work in the UK and Awards for All is funding the film documentation, but more than £7,000 was raised in Herefordshire.