A HARD hitting play which aims to warn young people about the dangers of using their mobile phone behind the wheel will be touring schools in the town.

The performance is inspired by the story of Meg Williamson who lost her boyfriend Gavin Roberts in a high-speed collision last June after a reckless driver hit the central reservation of the A34 and crashed into Gavin while having an argument on his mobile phone.

Staged by Ricky Theatre Company, which is made up of a group of New College students, the performance called, Second, was played out to students and teachers at Royal Wootton Bassett Academy this week, where Meg is an English teacher.

The show offers insight into the often overlooked emotional consequences of using a mobile phone behind the wheel and how a simple decision can have such devastating consequences.

Meg’s former student George Hargreaves decided to put the performance together after seeing her on a documentary looking at restorative justice where she met the man who killed Gavin.

The 16-year-old said: “Meg helped me so much through school and after I heard last year what happened to her boyfriend, I felt powerless, I didn’t know what to say to her or how to help.

“After she took part in the documentary, I realised I had an opportunity to do something to assist her in raising awareness. We had a good team of actors and needed something to work on that could challenge us emotionally and something we could produce good meaningful work from.

“I reached out to Meg and sent her my idea for a show and things just took off from there. It’s been amazing to produce something that is so close to our hearts and something that could potentially save someone’s life.”

George added: “Theatre is often overlooked as an educational tool, I think that it may be a slowly dying industry. The government are cutting funding to arts as they deem them as useless. But when it comes to understanding something so horrible and so complex, theatre is a godsend. As young people we all want to see more people getting involved and backing shows like ours.”

The drama forms part of the group’s theatre and education programme at New College where it was debuted last week.

It is hoped that the performance will encourage students, who are old enough to drive, to think differently by the highly-emotive drama.

Meg, 27 said: “I am so proud of them for doing this.

“Since everything happened, people have been so supportive and a lot of them have said it has changed their driving habits by putting their phone in the glove box or the boot after seeing how using it can impact on someone.

“It is about trying to re-educate people about the dangers and asking schools to welcome these guys to come in and put on the performance because if it can make one person think differently then that is only a good thing.”

As well as touring schools, the group will perform at the Shoebox Theatre on June 9. To find out more about booking Ricky Theatre Company, visit www.rickytheatrecompany.co.uk.