Lyn Ferrand

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NEWS: Lyn’s new book LOVE SCENES is out! Lyn wrote book while she was going through cancer treatment.

LOVE SCENES: Wickedly funny, deeply moving, and laced with magical realism, Love Scenes is a celebration of flawed humanity, the endurance of hope, and the mysterious ways love finds us, even in the most unlikely places.

In the heart of rural Devon, a crumbling longhouse becomes the stage for a cast of unforgettable characters; actors, dreamers, lovers, and lost souls, each searching for connection and a place to belong. As they collide under one roof, tragedy, comedy, and passion intertwine in unexpected ways as secrets unravel and love is tested by the chaos of modern life and the boundaries between reality and performance blur.

Can love really endure when the script keeps changing? Or are we all just playing parts in someone else’s story?

Buy your copy on Amazon!

https://amzn.eu/d/3jG4QvK

Writer and Director Lyn Ferrand founded Turning Point Theatre Company in 1989. In 2000 she co-founded Buzzword Interactive Films and made award winning theatre and training film dramas.

(Jane Bellamy as the carer.)

A photo from Lyn’s Play CARERS, showing a carer jumping through hoops to get benefits. Tickets for the show came back printed CAREERS. The printer said: “There is no such word as carer.”

The first performance was in 1999. The show toured continually until 2004. It was then made into an award winning film to be used as a training resource.

Working in association with a variety of voluntary and statutory agencies over a period of 14 years she was commissioned to write and direct plays and films that looked at diverse health and social issues. She designed and ran training programmes using theatre and film. Clients included The Crown Prosecution Service, The Devon and Cornwall Police, Devon County Council, Lancashire County Council, the Scottish Mental Health Association, Women’s Aid, Rethink UK and Carers UK. Lyn worked with director and humanist Augusto Boal She wrote forum theatre plays and worked as a forum theatre practitioner for many different clients in the field of health and social care. Her article about her work with carers is published in Contemporary Theatre Review.

THE LOST CHILD can now be viewed on You Tube.

THE LOST CHILD has been described as : “An example of exceptionally effective learning”

The DVD was commissioned by Lancashire Social Services for the ACPC . It was written and directed by Lyn, produced by Mike Berenger and shot by Greg Browning.

The film was:

Highly Commended at The Community Care Awards
Highly Commended at the Cumbria and Lancashire SHA Achievement Awards
Winner of The National Training Awards North West
Winner of The Skills for Care Training Accolade and was awarded 4 stars in Community Care Magazine.

The Lost Child is currently being used nationally and internationally (University of Southern Australia) and has proved to be a very useful and innovative training resource.

“North Essex Partnership Foundation Trust is using the DVD The Lost Child as a component of its mandatory two day Safeguarding Children Training which is provided to all clinicians and practitioners working within NEPFT. The DVD is used as an interactive exercise within which professionals explore the impact of parental mental illness on the child and the knowledge of professionals working in different domains and agencies.
The response to the DVD – (which has been used as part of the mandatory training programme for over three years with more than 750 professionals) – has always been excellent. It enables professionals to consider the impact of mental illness on relationships, the position of the child and frequent absence of the child’s voice in adult mental health services. Following use of the DVD as an interactive exercise, professionals link the lessons learned into policy and procedure – for example the use of genograms in all assessments. The DVD is thus an essential component in translating theory regarding the impact of parental mental illness on children and families into practice” Consultant, Safeguarding Children & Adults. North Essex Partnership Foundation Trust

COMMUNITY CARE MAGAZINE:

“I hope this DVD is an indicator of just how far on-a-shoestring, role play-reliant social care training has come. The fact that this is a DVD for one blows the cobwebs off the technophobe perception of top-loading VCRs, writes Graham Hopkins.

Back in the early 1990s, I remember having to use a video of Monty Python’s parrot sketch on my courses on social care complaints just to have a visual break. But it is the top-notch quality of this professional production that stands out. Happily, it is a quality that training resources – often themselves the neglected child of social care organisations – are increasingly now providing.

Bravely commissioned by Lancashire social services to explore child protection and parental mental illness, the 30-minute film for the most part convincingly traces the relationship between Alison (Anita Parry) a make-the-best-of-it mum and Nick (MikeBerenger) a mentally-ill study in smouldering tension.

It is seen in flashback through the eyes of their 16-year-old daughter, Tina (Frankie Waller), the acting star of the piece – despite her accent occasionally wandering up and down the M1. Her line, “I’m not a child – don’t think I’ve ever been a child,” is the film’s sound central message.”

Star Rating: 4/5

Lyn’s play Aggravated Trespass was commissioned by The Crown Prosecution Service and The Devon Racial Equality Council. It was presented to an audience of judges, magistrates and police at a major conference in the South West.

“A polished cast of actors delivered a telling script raising a number of highly pertinent issues around racism in rural communities. Peter Ellis (Chief Inspector Brownlow from ‘The Bill’) played a newly appointed JP who found himself hosting a ‘difficult’ dinner party where his student daughter introduced her black fiance and his barrister sister to two family friends whose attitudes to ethnic minorities were sadly all too familiar. The play required its audience to think carefully about how black people are received in the prosperous shires and how ‘liberal’ facades can so easily mask deeply irrational prejudices.”

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News:

https://medium.com/@Blogrestaurant/dancing-with-death-or-not-c2a9fa1902cc

NEWS: August 2025.

Lyn Ferrand has been a carer for her husband since 2017. Her husband Mike Ferrand worked with her on several projects. She has now retired but continues to write and hopes to publish a new novel soon. Lyn is currently undergoing treatment for cancer.

MIKE FERRAND

A graduate of the Class of 1965, and with a BA in English and Drama from the University of Exeter (1972-75). From 1975-76 Mike was a Director of Theatre-in-Education for the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, working with a group of teachers and actors in schools and colleges throughout Devon. And from September 1975 until 2005 Mike was with the University of Exeter, retiring as a Senior Lecturer. During his time at Exeter he was also Voice and Communications lecturer for the Bell Telephone Company as part of their educational programme in Washington DC, USA and he coached drama students for Stock Theatre companies. He travelled widely in the US adjudicating at drama festivals and creating and implementing National Diploma Performing Arts courses. He also co-ordinated and led educational events in Europe (inc. Kassel Documenta Art Fair), was Creative Director for outreach Drama Therapy projects at local hospitals, created and led in-house drugs and health awareness projects for all students at Exeter College and in Exeter schools and between 1981-82 was on a Fulbright Exchange as Director of Theatre at Annandale College, Washington DC, USA, responsible for the Theatre and Drama programme. He was also an Examiner for Edexcel for Theatre Studies and Performing Arts, and still found occasional work as a professional actor.

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