‘The audience is there for the accidents’: How a play staged on the racetrack became a smash with the racers | stage

toExie Crosby was five days old when she ran her first ever race. “I grew up around the track,” the 14-year-old says. At nine years old, her racer father gave her the chance to compete in the Micro F2s Championship, a junior league, and Crosby has been racing ever since. “You’re full of adrenaline,” she says of motorsport. “It’s the best feeling ever.”

This month, Crosby took to her local Cornish track, United Downs Racecourse (also known as St Day), for an event of a different kind. The Kneebone Cadillac, a raucous play by Carl Gross about a pop racer and her family, was set and performed at the track. For Crosby, this was her first theatrical performance ever. “I really enjoyed it,” she says. “My whole family did it.” Director Kayla Judy loved seeing how many contestants showed up, when theater wasn’t part of their regular lives. “It was like a bridge between worlds,” she says. “And that’s exactly what we wanted.”

Banger racing is all about speed and damage. Stock cars are eviscerated, stripped and fitted with safety equipment for ‘push and spin’ races, where contact is limited but still impressive. In the event of a collision, the car collapses but the driver is safe. “The crowd is there preparing for accidents,” admits Leta Rowling-Aldridge, 27, a local care home worker. She has raced for the past five years with her brother at St. Day, where their father drove for three decades. “I never felt nervous,” she says. In recent months, she has broken her shoulder and sprained her ankle, but “I’m just focused on getting back out there.”

Built on an old tin mine and having survived threats of redevelopment, St Day is the center of life for runners throughout Cornwall, especially as many other tracks have closed. “When you attend a meeting, it’s like you have your whole family there,” Crosby says. Gross, who grew up enjoying the roaring frames of St Day on public holidays, wanted to capture this community. The Kneebone Cadillac began as a radio play in 2011, and was performed at the Theater Royal Plymouth, where it premiered in 2018.

Grose’s high-octane comedy follows determined young racer Maddy Kneebone on a bumpy ride that includes the death of her junkyard father, the inheritance of a prized Cadillac and a secret stash of gold. “You never stop laughing,” says Crispin Rosevear, one of the racetrack’s co-promoters. In 2024, he cleared his schedule so that Wildworks, Goodey’s company, could make the show. Two years later, Cadillac Kneebone is back.

This is not a money maker for the track. “I do it out of my love for the play,” Rosevear says. He lovingly describes United Downs as “the tough end of the race” because “that means it’s accessible to everyone.” The racing world seems to operate on this spirit of generosity: “If something goes wrong, there’s always someone there to help you fix it,” Crosby says.

As the contestants gaze at the stage, the theater makers fall in love with the sport. “It blows your mind,” Judy says. “It’s all a risk assessment in theatre, and here I saw 10 cars piling up, and a young woman got out of the middle of it.”

Although the race is still largely male-dominated, the picture is changing. “When I started, most of the girls were very suspicious, like they were there to get in the way. But we’re all trying to prove them wrong,” Crosby says. Caitlin Emery, whose parents and grandparents also raced, has been doing so for five years and has won several championships. “I still get nervous because of the uncertainty of what’s going to happen,” says the 19-year-old. “But that noise. When you’re in the car, you forget everything.” Racing against both men and women, she entered national sausage races, a more extreme category in which aggressive contact is permitted. “It’s scarier,” she says. “It’s much harder to hit.”

All drivers agree on the addictive nature of racing. “If sausage racing draws you in, you’re hooked,” says Rosevear. “It becomes a way of life.” Kerry Birch is in her second year of racing, having met her partner, a 23-year-old racer whose father’s ashes were scattered at St Day track. “He took me in the car, and that was that,” she says. “It seemed fun, as crazy as it was. Once I get on that path, I’m in my own little world.” She is a mother of four girls, including a seven-year-old who is worried about Birch getting injured but is also keen to try the Micro F2s. “We’re just trying to get the money so you can get out of there,” Birch says.

Like theatre, racing is an expensive sport. Even at the top of the game, drivers will spend much more than they can win. “It’s a rush,” Rosevear reasons. “You can’t buy excitement that way.” Jodi was firm that the show should not exclude those it talks about and to. With tickets starting from £1, the radical price reflects the generous principle surrounding the track: if you’ve got a spare, give it away; If someone needs help, you have to step up. With puppets, songs and the sun setting behind the track, the Kneebone Cadillac reflects some of the track’s magic. “I hope the show captures the spirit of going to the race track,” Gross says. “Chaotic, exciting and a little dangerous.”