We sat down with director Kay Brattan and playwright/producer Margarita Valderrama to chat about their new show Witch Girl Summer. Tickets here.
Witch Girl Summer has been described as “Mean Girls meets The Blair Witch Project — exorcism edition.” What first attracted you to this darkly comic world, and what made you want to direct its world premiere?
Kay: Margarita has written one hell of a roller coaster of a play! And I will always love a witch story. So the title alone attracted me to it when she and I first met to talk about her witch play. A horror comedy felt like such a delicious creative challenge to stage. Horror is a genre that has always fascinated me. But besides the fact that I really just want to scare people, the story has such a strong heartbeat about friendship, and speaks of the loneliness that can be felt when all of our interactions and sense of self worth are rooted deeply in the realm of social media. We should feel so connected because of these devices in our hands, but that connectedness can lead to isolation, or, in some cases, falling into a “community” that may be doing more harm to you than good. Horror is a genre that has always looked at the world and amplified back to us what we’re truly afraid of, or afraid of becoming. And to me, there’s something about the catharsis I experience when watching a scary movie that feels like a great purge of all the fears that I keep locked inside me. Then there is this incredibly hilarious comedic element to Witch Girl Summer that satirises the ridiculous beauty standards women are held to! When I go on instagram it feels as if my insecurities are somehow haunting me as I scroll down my feed. The fact that an algorithm tracks my interactions on social media even if I just hover over an image is sort of terrifying. The internet is truly its own horror story. So let’s make fun of it. The play whiplashes between these two states of comedy and horror in such a brilliant way, which is what makes it an exciting watch for an audience, and an absolute blast to direct.
This marks your first full production collaboration together. How did you approach shaping the tone — balancing satire, horror, and psychological intensity?
Margarita: I’m notoriously a big scaredy-cat when it comes to horror – the genre is too effective on me! I respect and admire its power. But horror and comedy share a structure: a set‑up that bursts into release. Writing the rapid back‑and‑forth between the absurd and the terrifying was a satisfying dance and I’m excited to see it’s translating into Kay’s vision as well.
I always say making art together should be fun and working with Kay and this team is very fun. The creepiness has surpassed what I imagined and I’m laughing in every rehearsal. That’s due to Elinor Coleman and Giullianna Martinez’s performances, who switch sharply and fabulously from horror to comedy. Eat your heart out, Chekhov!
Kay: It’s all dramaturged so brilliantly in Margarita’s script, so for me in staging it, it’s all about listening to what the play needs in each moment. The rehearsal room
has been a huge testing ground for this, to see what sounds work where, what physicality serves what moment best-the jump from camp to scary can happen in a micro second, so it’s all about being so detailed on which world we’re playing in for each scene and then being specific and sharp on when those switches happen. Having Margarita being in the room with us has been an essential part of this process. With new works, having the playwright present means that they’re able to see how their words are living in the real world for the very first time, so the script has been developed further as a result of this to what will serve the story best. I think the key to this is that none of us are being precious with what we’re exploring, which helps us make decisions on what is needed and what is not.
The play explores themes of self-esteem, beauty standards, and the pursuit of “glass skin.” How did you translate these contemporary pressures into something theatrical, visceral, and unsettling on stage?
Margarita: We’re trying to create, what the team calls, “digital hauntings” to emphasize the unreliable perspective of the protagonist. Scrolling endlessly on a phone is passive; we wanted to make the dread visceral. From day one Kay and I focused on attempting to capture the feeling of doom‑scrolling until it turns into brain rot. Onstage, the online world takes shape as a tangible presence: purposeful soundscapes make recognizable notifications and soundbites unsettling, while actors physically embody comments and content.
The Lion and Unicorn Theatre is an intimate space. How have you used that closeness to heighten the sense of horror, tension, or even complicity for the audience?
Kay: People always think horror is a tough genre to stage, but we have always been telling each other scary stories in the dark. And I bet you probably remember a story that was told to you that kept you awake for nights on end (mine was Bloody Mary). Most times, the thing we don’t see is the thing that scares us the most. Our imagination are such powerful tools, and the images that they create will always be scarier than an image fed to them. Leaning into the intimacy of The Lion and Unicorn’s space is asking the audience to use their imagination with us. What I’m looking to do is immerse them in an environment of a horror story. As with any piece of theatre, lights and sound will help, and I’m really interested in using sound in a way that heightens and intensifies the genre so that tension completely surrounds and transports the audience.
Margarita: An intimate space forces a tighter bond between performer and audience – there’s nowhere to hide.Thematically that works because while we all know beauty standards are unachievable and damaging, we all have different lines
regarding how much we buy into them. In this space the audience feels exactly what we feel when a stranger’s curated life flashes across our screens: “Why do I know what this person’s bedroom looks like?” They’ll see both the polished façade the protagonist projects and the messy reality lurking just out of frame.
The piece promises “horrific catharsis.” What kind of emotional journey do you hope audiences will go through — and what conversations do you hope they’re having on the way home?
Margarita: I want the audience to wrestle with what it means to take accountability. The online world seems designed to divide and isolate us, leaving little room for nuance. People are either idolized or vilified, and today’s hero becomes tomorrow’s villain and it’s scary to see this binary thinking seeping into our world IRL. Can the audience forgive our protagonist? Where do their own contradictions lie? How do they reconcile them? I hope they leave with different interpretations of the ending and debating those questions over a drink at the pub.
As a director with experience across different forms of storytelling, what has this production challenged you with creatively, and what has surprised you most in rehearsal?
Kay: For Witch Girl Summer, sound design has a huge presence in this piece in what creates the atmosphere of the piece. I adore working with sound, and it’s a skill I’ve been developing alongside my practice as a director. This play is filmic in the way sound affects the journeys of the characters, and how it emotionally moves the audience from one moment to the next, and that has been an exciting challenge in creating this world. I think one of the biggest surprises has been in finding elements of folk horror in something I thought was originally going to be rooted in the digital sphere. But there’s an earthiness to this play in its incorporation of the wild woman, and the themes of “girlhood” vs “womanhood” is something I was surprised to uncover through working with the actors in the room and discovering how the magic of the play is physicalised by them. I try really hard to listen to what the play needs, what the actors need, and what are the best choices to make in service to the story. I will always come into the room with my thoughts and ideas about the play, but I will always leave room for those to change and expand through collaboration with the actors and other creatives. To me, surprises should be a natural occurrence in the rehearsal room. It’s like a creative laboratory and we’re all mad scientists. Make a mess, throw all the things against the wall, and see what sticks.