This week’s #SundaySpotlight shines on playwright @tommortonsmith✍️🎭 After the success of his 2015 play, Oppenheimer, shown in the first picture. @thersc asked Tom if he had any ideas for a family show. ‘I said almost immediately: My Neighbour Totoro’, he recalls ✨ Tom was drawn to @totoroshow because ‘it invites you to watch such small things again, like you did as a child.’ The adventures of Satsuki and Mei remind him of his own childhood where ‘woodlands and forests were never too far away’🌳🌱 For Tom, ‘adaptation is a delicate thing – even more so when it’s a character and story that is so deeply loved’. He’s lost count of the number of times that he’s seen the film and is still finding new things in it each time✨ ‘The first draft of the script essentially had impossible thing after impossible thing in the stage directions. Seeing designer @tompye33 and puppet-master @basiltwist3 navigate those challenges has been a real privilege’ 🙌 ‘I want to send the kids home with their imaginations overflowing, and their parents’ home with their hearts broken’ says Tom 💚 📸 Oppenheimer (2015) - Keith Pattison