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Alibi presents FRAMED! by PaddleBoat Theatre Company
Alibi has an outstanding reputation for bringing high quality theatre into schools. For over 40 years we have reached thousands of children with original, imaginative and inspiring stories in schools across the South West.
Over the last 4 years we’ve taken a pause from schools’ touring to focus on transforming our home in St Thomas, Exeter into a vibrant family venue. This autumn we are excited to be returning to schools, along with the brilliant PaddleBoat Theatre Company, with a show that will once again bring the joy of live theatre into your school halls.
FRAMED! is a funny, fast-paced and quirky show about partnership, adventure and deception.
The legendary detective Rufus Caper has had an astonishing career of solving crimes: Murders, mysteries, missing persons. It’s all in a day’s work for Rufus and his trusty assistant Aggie. There’s only one villain Rufus has never managed to apprehend; his nemesis Constance Shadows. When Rufus receives a voicemail challenging him to catch Constance before she commits her next crime, he can’t resist the opportunity. HOWEVER, the detective soon finds himself on the wrong side of the law and a wanted man on the run!
Rufus finds himself in a tricky situation and needs some help to uncover the truth. Through their distinctive mix of music, puppetry, clowning and more PaddleBoat will take your pupils on an exciting caper, to help ensure Rufus doesn’t go down for a crime he didn’t commit!
We know that experiencing live performance is incredibly valuable for children. It offers a fun and exciting shared experience for the school community, can increase wellbeing and inspires creativity which has an impact across all learning.
A free Teachers’ Resource Pack will offer prompts and ideas for activities that will link the show with Literacy, Oracy, Citizenship and PSHE outcomes as well as soft skills such as teamwork, confidence-building, problem-solving and emotional literacy.
"A great whodunnit plot with clever staging and fun audience interaction."
Audience review, Ashford Library
"Excellent, funny and engaging."
Audience review, Dorking Library
"My daughter loved the performance today, it was 'the most fun day she'd ever had at school'."
All Saints Primary
FAQs
60 minutes
We’ll arrive 90 minutes before the agreed performance start time and it’ll take up to 60 minutes to pack away at the end.
A few subtle photos of the children enjoying the performance is no problem, but please don’t film or photograph any part of the performance. There will photographs of the performance available online.
Yes, we are very happy to visit special schools or schools with high levels of SEND pupils. We will perform the original show without adaptations, but are happy to discuss small adjustments such as introducing the performers at the start.
We have carefully considered the recommended age range to ensure that our audiences get the most enjoyment out of the performance. However, we are always happy to discuss any particular requests from schools. In particular, we have found that older students studying for GCSEs and beyond can greatly benefit from seeing professional work made for younger audiences.
The Teachers’ Resource Pack will be available to download from our website by 1 September 2026.
We charge per pupil that attends a performance in order to try and keep our pricing as fair and accessible as possible. We don’t think children should miss out just because they attend a smaller school. However, we do need to make sure that our tours are sustainable for us, so may need to impose minimum charges or minimum audience numbers. If you’d like us to visit you school, even if it’s a tiny school, please do get in touch and we will always do our best to find a way to make it work.
We need a clear space of 6m wide by 5m deep by 3m high, plus room for the children to sit and watch. If you think the hall is nearly big enough, take some measurements and get in touch with us. Sometimes we can be a bit flexible, but it depends on the hall in question. If you know your school hall is too small, is there a local village hall or other public space that you could book for the performance? Or is there another school nearby with a larger hall that you could join with?
Yes! We’re very happy for smaller schools to join together, either at one with a large hall or at a nearby village hall. It’s no problem to charge schools separately and send individual invoices.
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