Engineers have created one of the key props for a play written and directed by a teenager with Down’s syndrome.

Max Lewis literally dreamed up the storyline of his directorial debut I am the Dream Machine in which a flying wheelchair creates music from dreams and even nightmares.

Electric Umbrella, a Watford-based theatre production company, helped perform Max’s play and also teamed up with an Abbots Langley design firm that specialises in disabled equipment, DEMAND Design and Manufacture for Disability, to create Max’s ‘Dream Machine’.

The wheelchair took more than 12 weeks to build until it was finally ready for the premier at the Watford Palace Theatre in Clarendon Road on July 8.

Lynnette of DEMAND Design and Manufacture for Disability said: ‘As supporters of Electric Umbrella’s work empowering people with learning disabilities to take centre stage, we were keen to collaborate and help shine a spotlight on the talents of disabled people.

“For over 12 weeks we took Max’s vision of the Dream Machine from paper, via our computer modelling software and CAM machinery, into the real world and onto the big stage.

“With Max’s creativity and our technical know-how, we were able to construct the world’s first song-writing, mind-reading wheelchair and help the performers share the story of the Dream Machine.”