Category: political

Image Credit: Dave Hutchinson

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Rowland D. Hill

Published on by ayoungishperspective1Leave a comment

Charlie & Striptease is a double-bill of razor-sharp political satire by Sławomir Mrożek, blending absurd humour with unsettling situations, running at Golden Goose Theatre 21st April – 9th May 2026. Tickets available here. We sat down with producer and actor Rowland D. Hill to discuss their upcoming production.

What first drew you to the work of Sławomir Mrożek?

I was approached by Orsolya Nagy, theatre maker and director, who had been researching 1960’s and 70’s Eastern European theatre. Orsolya introduced me to Striptease and invited me to perform in a test production at the Birmingham Theatre Festival in 2025. Working on the play was a delight and audience reaction in Birmingham was very positive. As a result I scoured the internet and found a copy of six plays by Mrozek in English translation. They are all exceptional – entertaining and thought-provoking – and speak strongly to the situation in the world today. I was keen to do more!

What felt important about presenting the two plays together as a double-bill?

Striptease is a forty minute play, and it was clear that to have a viable evening of theatre we needed an accompanying piece. I proposed to Orsolya that my company, DRH Arts, should co-produce a run of two Mrozek plays (Striptease and another) and we researched the other work before determining on Charlie as the companion piece. In fact I was torn between a play called Enchanted Night and Charlie. In the end Charlie won out because it is just so funny and absurd, and has wonderful characters and situations to explore. It sits well with Striptease as a contrast in terms of characters, but explores similar themes in a very different and eccentric way.

Mrożek’s writing blends deadpan absurdity with sharp political insight. How have you approached bringing that balance to the stage?

It is always a pleasure to work as an actor and theatre maker on scripts such as these, which have emotional integrity and great characterisations. As performers we have to find the truth of the characters, and the relationships between them. The political insight is something that the audience will hopefully enjoy, but the characters are not stating that, rather their situation illustrates political issues that in some ways the characters are struggling with. The comedy is opened up and revealed if we are honest in our portrayals and in the goings on between us. Hopefully we’ll achieve that! 

Taking on both producing and acting roles can be demanding. How does being a producer change the way you approach your performance?

Being a producer does not change my approach to performance at all. I have a lot of experience as a producer and understand how that role works and what is required, so I am able to separate the two roles.  I’ve done it before and have also been writer and producer (in 2025 for my play Who is Claude Cahun? at Southwark Playhouse), which in some ways was more difficult because I was not on stage presenting the work! Sometimes it’s necessary to be proactive in facilitating the work you want to do and hence being willing to act as a producer. The challenge is probably the work load that is required, especially when, as with Charlie and Striptease, there are large character parts to learn and rehearse. It’s lovely to get in the rehearsal room and forget about the producer bit for a time!

If someone is unfamiliar with Mrożek’s work, what would you love them to discover through this production?

I anticipate that many people seeing this double-bill of theatre will be unfamiliar with Mrozek, as indeed I was until Orsolya’s introduction! He is an extraordinary writer who deserves to be much better known in the UK. It should be said that his reputation remains high and high profile in Poland and some other Eastern European countries. I think people will be awe struck by the quality of the writing and by the imagination that has created these ridiculous situations and events, but which so strongly satirise the claustrophobic and unjust world of an authoritarian regime. I hope people will chuckle at the plays and at the same time understand the dangers they warn against.

    Review: Folklorica – A Luminous Latin Fairytale with Grit and Heart

    Published on by Maria Mădălina IfrimLeave a comment

    Rating: 3 out of 5.

    “A spirited, socially-charged fable that sometimes stumbles in execution but soars in heart and purpose.“

    Folklorica, produced by Climate Action Productions, is a powerful and imaginative tale that blends magical realism with urgent social commentary. Written, directed, and produced by Jade Alvara, the play reimagines the Latina fairytale through the lens of environmentalism, class struggle, and feminism.

    Set against the smog and sweat of the industrial revolution, Folklorica follows Mira (Nicole Schretlen Montes), a young Latina factory worker navigating exploitation, pregnancy, and the supernatural. Alongside a resilient ensemble of women, she faces the grim realities of overwork, harassment, and survival until a mystical healer in the forest offers an escape into a dreamlike underworld where time, magic, and morality blur.

    The production’s strength lies in its unapologetic energy and the authenticity of its Latina identity. The all-Latinx cast delivers heartfelt performances, with standout moments from Montes as the tender yet fierce Mira and Jade Alvara’s earthy portrayal of Mama Milagra. The camaraderie between the women feels genuine, capturing both the humour and heartbreak of collective struggle.

    However, Folklorica’s ambition sometimes works against it. The dialogue can feel rushed, with emotional beats occasionally lost in shouting or quick pacing. Certain story turns  (like the sudden pregnancy reveal or the healer’s acceptance of a morally conflicted choice) verge on cliché or lack the depth they deserve. Narrative lines of argumentation such as: “Abortion is a sin — but I need help — oh, okay,” flatten what could have been a nuanced moral conflict.

    Thematically, the play grapples with trust and betrayal, particularly in its portrayal of men. From the manipulative factory boss who started as a suitor whose charm fades quickly (“A prize like you needs to be claimed”), Folklorica raises questions about male power and exploitation, though at times it leans into archetype. The transformation of a demon, the only male character,  into a pig, for instance, is effective in symbolism but somewhat heavy-handed in delivery.

    Despite its uneven moments, Folklorica is a brave and vital production. It celebrates Latina resilience, critiques systems of exploitation, and reclaims the fairytale as a space for rebellion and renewal. With its blend of grit, humour, and magic, the play stands as both a protest and a promise that Latin American voices will continue to be heard, and their stories, however fantastical, will speak truth to power.

    Credit: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

    REVIEW: The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella at Southbank Centre

    Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    to (un)mark

    Botticelli’s four-panel cycle of Nastagio degli Onesti, a tale lifted from Boccaccio’s Decameron, depicts a brutal and chilling parable of male violence and coercion against women. Nastagio traps a woman to marry him by staging an eternal punishment of another woman, forever chased, slain, and gutted by a knight.

    This almost reads as a meta-narrative of patriarchy: women can only keep “safe” from “bad men” by seeking the protection of a “good man.” Between Scylla and Charybdis, women are forever objectified as men’s personal belongings.

    Carolina Bianchi begins her performance, CADELA FORÇA TRILOGY – Chapter I: The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella, with Botticelli’s four-panel paining. This live performance constitutes part of her Dantean journey through the history of rape and femicide, as well as a restless inquiry into the nature of performance art itself. A decade after being drugged and assaulted, Bianchi now took a dose of “Goodnight Cinderella”, a Brazilian date-rape drug, onstage.

    When Bianchi was still sombre, she gave us a lecture revisiting the femicide happened in history, especially those involving female artists. The central figure is Italian artist Pippa Bacca. Bacca, together with her collaborator Silvia Moro, took a live performance in 2008. They dressed as brides and tried to make a trip from Milan to Jerusalem by crossing the Balkans all the way through hitchhike. However, when they were near the skirt of Istanbul, Moro refused to hop on a car because she didn’t feel safe. Bacca insisted so the pair parted. In a forest, Bacca was raped, strangled, and later found slaughtered. Other female artists are woven into Bianchi’s query, including Abramović and her Rhythm 0, Tania Bruguer and her Self-Sabotage, and Ana Mendieta’s She Got Love and her fatal fall from the 34th floor – anecdotally at the hands of her husband. 

    Why femicide? Why rape? Why female performance artists? To seek answers, Bianchi crawled onto her desk, falling asleep, leaving us to witness what would happen to her, live.  In Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Philip Auslander has defined that the nature of performance art relies on its physical and temporal, unmediated co-presence of the performers and the audience. Erika Fischer-Lichte later emphasised in her The Transformative Power of Performance that immateriality, disappearance and impermanence became key ideas around performance art.

    That is to say, what they describe as unmarked, unarchivable liveness that constitutes the nature of performance art, stands in starkest contrast to the very nature of rape and femicide, which is deeply marked, viscerally embodied, and ultimately ontological. In the second half, one of performers used a real penis-shaped camera to penetrate Bianchi’s vagina. We, the audience, witnessed how that penis was moved inside. We witnessed that raw, cruel ontology. In this world, there is perhaps no gap more immense, more irreconcilable, between the ontological, embodied experiences of living through rape, than all its epistemological recounting.

    Auslander proposes to study the relationship between unmarked liveness and recount-able archives as knowledge as historical and contingent, not as something of ontologically differentiated. But when it comes to rape and femicide, such a discussion feels unbearably weightless. Other performances, for instance, those documented through NT Live, might indeed be theorised this way, but is it the same thing to witness Bianchi got raped onstage, and to watch its archive? The most irreconcilable and controversial fact about live performance that stages rape is that, on one hand, compared to fiction or spoken drama, which frames rape into social justice, legal improvement, and other discursive narratives, live performance art confronts the act’s ontological markedness where socio-cultural discourses cannot operate upon. On the other hand, performance art’s very ephemerality, its non-ontological existence, is thrown into the most violent contrast with rape’s irreducible embodiment.

    Furthermore, this is also inseparable from women’s sense of self, their crushed subjectivity. For Lacan, the subject is always a traumatised subject: for the default male subject, trauma is the forever-lost objet petit a in the Oedipal triangle of daddy–mommy–me. But what of the female subject? Is women’s collective originary trauma the fate narrated in Nastagio degli Onesti, either to be hunted, raped, and slaughtered, or else to become an object easily yielded to another man in order to avoid such a fate? Is it the marked trauma of womanhood itself? Is it why Bianchi yelled, “Fuck Catharsis”? Because just like the forever lost objet petit a, there is simply just no way to, ontologically, unmark that trauma.

    In What The Body Cost, Jane Blocker argues that it is the desire for presence that constitutes part of the written history. Thus she views documentation in a position of absolute desire. Perhaps that could also be Bianchi’s positionality. It would be deeply unsettling and troubling to say that her performance is to “cure and purify” like a therapy session. But maybe, just maybe, her performance is about being absolutely ephemeral in performance, and absolutely marked in the history and documentation of rape and femicide. 

    Credit: Mark Senior

    REVIEW: Seagull: True Story at Marylebone Theatre

    Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    Wandering about between Moscow and New York

    What is freedom? What does it mean in art and in life? How does it feel, how does it taste? Is it Nina’s dream of the stage? Is it Treplev’s restless breaking away from artistic convention? These questions haunted so many, including young Chekhov writing The Seagull.

    More than a century later, Russian director Alexander Molochnikov revisits these questions with urgent immediacy in Seagull: True Story, co-created with writer Eli Rarey under the suffocating socio-political climate of Russia in 2022, when freedom, in both art and life, became piercingly visible.

    Set in Moscow in early 2022, the play follows young director Kon (Daniel Boyd), whose dream of staging a radical Seagull is shattered by Putin’s “special military operation.” His openly speaks against the regime, leading him into exile in New York, leaving behind his mother Olga (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and his dramaturg Anton (Elan Zafir) to clean up the mess. In the Big Apple, the capital of the capitalist, liberal empire, Kon meets Broadway producer Barry (Andrey Burkovskiy) and actor Nico (Stella Baker), with whom he seems to continue chasing his artistic dream.

    To some extent, Seagull: True Story especially speaks to those who have embodied living experiences of double ideologies: growing up in a post-Soviet, socialist society but are greatly affected by (neo)liberalism in the 90s and early 2000s. For them, Russia and the US are not two extreme poles on the political spectrum, but strangely fused and reflective. One seems to respect art and artists only on the condition of their submission to the regime; the other is represented by a single $900 Broadway ticket and numerous anonymous off-off-off-off-off-off Broadway theatre makers. 

    But how far are these two worlds, really? Or are they just two points of a horseshoe? Kon leaves for the US where he believes freedom lies, having no idea that two years later, it will once again welcome Donald Trump’s reincarnation. But is it just Trump? Maybe, he is just an amplifier of a system claiming to be the most ideal and free so long as you subject yourself to the power of money. What left for Kon, is the even more perplexing freedom. The freedom Kon craves so much eventually comes off like cold, hard leftover food, hardly enough to satisfy his artistic hunger. 

    The metatheatrical layers unfold smoothly, energised by Burkovskiy as the MC and an ensemble of ten. The production feels like a whirlwind tour of the last decade of Western theatre with rich directorial approaches juxtaposing its absurdity and nostalgia at the same time: snowball fights with “Lenin” on Red Square, a Kit Kat Club–style disco dream with Putin (choreographed by Ohad Mazor), and a parody immersive theatre Three Little Pigs.  Underscored by Fedor Zhuravlev and Julian Starr’s sensational music and sound design, Nostalgia, irony, and absurdity collapse into one another.

    The love story between Kon and Nico, however, feels too filmic and clichéd, unconvincing from my point of view. It is more a device to demonstrate Kon’s own sense of getting lost. The true emotional tie in this story, I reckon, lies in between Kon and Anton who is both his dramaturg and life mentor, where Kon’s conscience lies. The goldfish with a balloon – a gift from Anton – is what Kon can hold onto when he gets entirely lost in-between Russia and America, between these two values and two ways of lives. 

    So when Anton dies, Kon is completely lost. American capitalist freedom promises everything if you sell yourself like a whore. Russian authoritarianism offers him what he wants because his mother is Olga, but at the same time, countless Antons are arrested, detained, or murdered. Just as Anton says, he can always meet more interesting people in the jail than in a cafe. At this point, Kon is both Nina and Treplev. The Seagull becomes a metatheatrical, new historical Chekov’s gun, eventually fires after more than a century. 

    Kon doesn’t jump off the NYC subway platform, and this time, Nico isn’t there. Instead, he falls into the arms of Burkovskiy, dancing with him in a dreamlike paradise, indulging himself in any sort of (dis)illusion. It no longer matters who Burkovskiy is performing, the stage manager of Moscow Arts Theatre, the flamboyant Broadway Producer, or, the MC of this story. Kon is just so lost, in Russia, in America, in theatre and in art, down the intriguing yet treacherous road to freedom.

    Credit: Ikin Yum

    REVIEW: The Reckoning at Arcola Theatre

    Published on by Ke MengLeave a comment

    Rating: 5 out of 5.

    “Ethnotheatre in its best, most ideal and beautiful form”

    I have to admit: I’ve always held a deeply biased view of both verbatim theatre and Eastern European theatrical aesthetics. The insistence on “word-for-word transcription for the sake of authenticity”, and all those Grotowskian declarations like “art is suffering,” or “life is suffering”, all makes me feel a kind of didactic dullness, especially when a production uses amateur performers or has first-person narrators speak instead of professional actors.

    The Reckoning completely crushes my naivety and bias. It triumphs with its sincerity of expression, a richness that nourishes both the mind and heart (and literally, your mouth!), and a refined, skilful theatrical language. Co-written by Anastasiia Kosodii and Josephine Burton and based on this Reckoning Project aimed at collecting live, accurate testimonies of war crimes, this part-verbatim, part-fictional performance centres around a man (Tom Godwin) from Stoyanka who refuses to leave his boss’s home, and a female journalist (Marianne Oldham) interviewing him.

    Their exchange begins as one of the most painfully awkward fieldwork scenes: cold, resistant, uncooperative, with the journalist only seeing him as the source of “data”. However, this starts to change when she begins to open up about her own family’s struggle for evacuation and about the impossible moral choices they faced. He too, starts to talk, and he does so while preparing a fresh Ukrainian summer salad. They both regret for what they have done and what they have not, laying bare the raw, horrifying truth of war, and perhaps even more horrifying truth of humanity. This is the suffering we must bear. We must suffer in recognition of truth, and only through that recognition can we carry on—to make that fresh summer salad. The salad is not a prop. It is an emblem of life.

    Yes. At its core, I think The Reckoning is a performance about vigilance: the vigilance of life, and the even greater challenge of continuing to believe in life after witnessing the abyss of humanity.  Maybe that’s the kind of “truth” Grotowski sought, or the “tragic culture” Friedrich Nietzsche once wanted us to rebuild.

    Paralleled with this central narrative are verbatim vignettes based on the journalists’ past interviews with a number of informants all played by Ukrainian actors Simeon Kyslyi and Olga Safronova in original Ukrainian, with Oldham interpreting. Certainly, there are compromising parts as verbatim theatre, director Burton works hard to stage them as genuine dialogues rather than stiff, conference-like interpretation. There was one vignette that the journalist and the woman sitting back-to-back and talking, and the silence in-between words is full of unspeakable tension. Kyslyi and Safronova also double as the MC/narrators who greet us, talk jokes with us, “tell me something good”, and … confront us with waves of emotion we almost can no longer bear. 

    Zoë Hurwitz’s design ensures that props are never just add-ons. Rather, they are agents of the performance. These three pieces of wooden furniture serve as the table, the body, the checkpoint, and the ditch; in precise moment, they are also cued to trigger psychological horror and the darkest human evil. Joshua Pharo’s lighting mirrors the same, integral to the whole performance, capturing nuanced psychological landscape.

    Continuing to collect stories, the journalist eventually becomes part of that story, not only because she has also experienced the war, the evacuation and the abyss of humanity, but also because she no longer seeing her intellectuals as mere “testimonies”. Through the dialogues and encounters, she has this most unique, irreplaceable intersubjective bonds with them, and that’s why eventually the man asks her to walk the dog with him -she truly becomes one of them.

    The Reckoning will be staged at Arcola Theatre until til 28th June. Tickets and info can be find here

    REVIEW: Animal Farm

    Published on by alexjfarrell5786b95e45Leave a comment

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    When the songs of freedom spread across Manor Farm, the animals revolt to find a new world where the animals are in charge. Although, some animals are more in charge than others.

    I was familiar, as most, with George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and had seen stage adaptations of it before. It is a story we enjoy to see told again with it’s simplicity but wildly complex meaning. It hits all of its points poignantly and allows the audience’s imagination to run wild, filling in the blanks. Amy Leach’s 2025 production with Stratford East and Leeds Playhouse’s, takes place within a brutalist depiction of Manor Farm. It gives a dystopian impression of a prison and when the hard EDM score kicks in we really feel the danger of this space. The direction, enforced by the set, lighting and sound design create a very stylish production which compliments the story excellently. 

    Leach strips back the animals, to appear in human form, with their animal tattooed somewhere on their costume. Some of the characters appear more animalistic than others, leaving me slightly confused at times on who was what. However, the specification of the species is really not necessary and all the actors know where their characters lie in this story and bring that in full force. 

    Following heart pounding opening of EDM beats and gorgeous choral work from the actors, Everal A Walsh does not drop the ball. His speech to the animals is riveting and begins the play at a climax. The audience were immediately locked in and it is commendable to achieve this within the first few pages of the script. The entire cast is strong. It struck me how important the relationships are within ‘Animal Farm’, as the cast are entirely believable as a family. We understand why they are fighting, it’s not for themselves but for each other. Their empathy and trust for each other is beautiful, as they learn to rebel, and breaks our hearts as we find it is their inevitable downfall. The cast achieve this as a collective and it is not a production of standouts. They all have dynamic qualities about them and only compliment each other. Tom Simper gave a nuanced performance as the gentle yet unhinged Squealer. His character is an underdog in this story. His manipulative tendencies often went unnoticed to me and haunted me when seeing the effects of it. Tianah Hodding’s naive Clover is frustratingly empathetic. It is a tricky character to humanise, as at times she is so unaware of the obvious, yet Hodding brought so much sense to the role. I particularly enjoyed Brydie Service’s performance as Clara. In her maternity wear which could be mistaken for a prison uniform, Service has many quirks and a constant scattiness, only to devastate us in her exploitation. David Nellist is fantastically dry in his delivery. He is the perfect bystander of the play. He appears as the unbothered comic relief through most of the play, an excellent choice, because when it comes to it, the circumstances hit him,  and hit us even more.

    Overall, I loved this production. Leach is having so much fun in her direction. She brings Northern voices to the London stage and it rings true in this story of community and labour. It lost some momentum at times and the production could have shed some of the more dialogue heavy moments, however the pace continues to bounce back and Leach doesn’t allow you to disengage.

    REVIEW: Revenge: After the Levoyah

    Published on by Rachel WoodLeave a comment

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

    A clever, chaotic Jewish heist comedy with political bite

    Directed by Emma Jude Harris  (Stage’s Fringe Five 2024), Revenge: After the Levoyah is an exciting, fast-paced, incredibly funny, yet refreshingly thoughtful piece of new theatre. Nick Cassembaum’s (Fringe First winner and Popcorn Writer’s Award nominee) script spits and crackles with chutzpah, unpacking different ways to be Jewish in the UK following the pre-pandemic furore surrounding the Labour party.

    Set in 2019, Jewish twins from Essex Dan and Lauren attend their grandfather’s funeral only to be caught up in 80-year old East End gangster Malcolm Spivek’s urge to ‘do something’ about the rise in antisemitism, fuelled by increasingly frothing media coverage. His plan for action takes the form of kidnapping Jeremy Corbyn. Oy. 

    Gemma Barnett and Dylan Corbett-Taylor’s acting is a feat of technical skill and physical endurance, portraying a sprawling cast between only the two of them. It is credit to their talent that smooth, lightning-quick character transitions hilariously and effectively evoke a bustling shiva (“‘you shouldn’t cook in a time like this’ – Eileen hands me a ziploc bag of fish goujons”), a full-blown, multi-factionary shoot-out (“we can’t tell you who we are, but let’s just say our boss wears a crown!”), and a hodgepodge, wisecracking octogenarian hit squad (“at least we weren’t florists – what are you gonna do, arrange them to death?”). The siblings’ initial shared disbelief at Malcolm’s heist plot, before becoming swept up in the pleasurably absurd action grounds the production and mirrors the audience’s experience beautifully.

    Alys Whitehead’s set design is fantastic, with red threads criss-crossing over our heads echoing the chaotic plans drawn up on revolving blackboards, locations and targets connected by red string. Clearly there is much untangling to do – of mass hysteria, inflammatory reporting of the UK press, the path to radicalism, and genuine fear, such as that of Dan and Lauren’s nan, who becomes afraid to leave her flat amidst the balagan. Pivotal moments of the kidnapping are comically undercut with the doubts and revelations of even Jeremy’s kidnappers – ‘I always quite liked him’, offhandedly comments one of the motley crew, a doc marten-sporting, ex-ANTIFA liberal rabbi. The production succeeds particularly in its intelligent presentation of a range of different Jewish voices and opinions (as it should – what’s new?).

    Continuing to have conversations about antisemitism in the UK, unknotting very real prejudice from the harmful misuse of the term with ulterior, obstructing motives, and with the effect of undermining genuine threats, remains of the utmost importance. This week, over 800 British Jews have signed a letter condemning the Metropolitan Police’s attempt to ban a march on questionable grounds of antisemitism. After the Levoyah is a beacon of hope and reason, in spite of its frenzied, surreal events – our world is desperate for art such as this. 

    Revenge:After the Levoyah plays at the Yard Theatre until 25th January. Tickets here.

    In Conversation with Emma Wilkinson Wright

    Published on by Antonia ConstantinLeave a comment

    The Last Days of Liz Truss?, from Oxia Theatre, by Greg Wilkinson directed by Anthony Shrubsall with Emma Wilkinson Wright as Liz Truss and Steve Nallon of Spitting Image as the voice of Margaret Thatcher and others. We sat down with Emma Wilkinson Wright.

    1. What initially drew you to the character of Liz Truss, and how did you prepare to embody her unique persona on stage?

    For me personally and also for my theatre company Oxia Theatre – the single most important questions when putting on a production are why this piece and why now? The Last Days of Liz Truss? is on the one hand a play about Liz: her rise to power, her 49 day premiership and then her fall from grace. It is, however, also a much broader commentary on wider, systemic issues and broken systems – financial, political, governmental, societal.  We are – to use one of Oxia’s mission statement lines – holding up a provocative and uncomfortable mirror to a whole series of deep-rooted issues, asking questions about what’s really going on and inviting the audience to engage with a process of challenge and reflection. 

    Preparing to embody her on stage was an 8 week process of immensely detailed research which entailed watching every single video of her (many times over), listening to her speak on repeat, reading everything that has ever been written about her and written by her, physical embodiment exercises, working with the amazing vocal coach Ryan O’Grady twice a week for two months to really unpick her voice: the tonality, intonations, the specifics of her vocal cadence and so forth. I literally didn’t leave a stone unturned and it’s really nice to see the critics noticing the work that has taken place behind the scenes. It was very important that we didn’t do caricature or parody.  It had to be truthful. Whilst I believe absolutely that she made huge, dreadful mistakes that caused chaos, I do also believe that she was treated atrociously by the media and the political systems. I want to portray the human being, the woman: the play is an attempt to portray a 360 degree person. 

    2. The play intertwines humour with serious political commentary. How did you navigate these shifts in tone to present a cohesive performance?

    The play is indeed very funny – audiences are laughing all the way through. It’s also VERY dark.  It’s been joyous to navigate this duality. I never had myself down as an actor that can do comedy – I tend to get cast in the dark roles – so this has been an eyeopener for me as well! I’ve learnt to really lean into and play with the humour. It’s also been really important to be very specific and very active with all the political commentary: there is a LOT of information in the piece, and some of it about complex economic theory.  It would be really boring for it feel like it was a ‘lecture”; it’s not, it is a piece of dramatic satire which relies on the use of information to convey the story. So it has been a case of being very clear about why I am saying what I am saying to them, what impact do I want to have on them, and in this way keeping everything very active, very energetic. And of course playing with timing – key for comedy. Also, the writing by Greg Wilkinson is absolutely superb, so it is easy to navigate, because it is so brilliantly written. 

    3. What specific techniques did you employ to capture Liz’s distinctive speech patterns?

    There is a nasality to her voice, a slightly metallic quality. She glottal-stops her ‘ing’ sounds, and tends to bounce her vowels. Upwards inflections are key, especially when she is listing things. The main challenge really has been that her public voice is quite robotic – doing that for an hour and a half on stage would be unbearable for the audience, so we’ve taken the key characteristics of her voice and softened them slightly to make sure the 90 minutes operates on multiple vocal levels and isn’t just the robotic delivery of text!! As I’ve already mentioned, we are portraying Liz as a person, not just the public persona. 

    4. Given the play’s satirical elements, how does audience reaction influence your performance, especially during comedic moments?

    Audience interaction is key! There is a LOT of breaking the fourth wall, and the way in which the audience interacts or not is something that entirely effects the energy of the show. We have had audiences laughing out loud from start to finish – and also slightly quieter audiences, listening intently. The trick as the performer is to read the room and gauge the temperature. It’s always really nice when the audience goes with it and joins in then fun, giving me stuff to bounce off! 

    5. Through portraying Liz Truss, did you gain any new perspectives on her political journey or the challenges she faced during her brief tenure as Prime Minister?

    Yes. I have more empathy for her. At the end of the day, this woman was torn to shreds by the media, politicians and the public. I’m not sure that would have happened with the same visceral hatred had she been a man.  

    6. What guidance would you offer young actors aiming to tackle complex political figures in their performances?

    Honestly – just do the work! Prepare, prepare, prepare. Do your research. Don’t leave any stone unturned. Get off book as early as you can, learn the lines as soon as you can (organically or by rote, whatever works for you!). It took me 6 weeks pretty much full time to learn the lines, and I did this so I could hit the ground running on day 1 of rehearsal.  I was also starting to loose sleep over the lines, you know those actor nightmares where you dream you’re on stage and you’ve learnt the wrong play, or you go to open your mouth and realise that you forgot to learn the script. Those dreams. Yeah, I had a few!!! 

    Also I would offer that portraying someone who has lived or is still alive is tough – there is due diligence to be done. I played Adelaine Hain in The Only White two years ago – that was an incredible experience, such an honour to walk in this phenomenal woman’s shoes and I made absolutely sure I honoured that responsibility. I even learnt to knit because apparently she would knit whilst waiting to go into court: I’m currently half way through a scarf for her son Peter Hain!!  But yes. Put simply. Do the work. 

    In Conversation With Megan Jenkins

    Published on by Tabitha JamesLeave a comment

    Megan Jenkins – the creator of the stage play with music, BILL, about the life of Milton William Cooper – sat down to speak to us ahead of it’s premiere at Omnibus Theatre in December. Sometimes dubbed “The Granddaddy of American Conspiracy Theorists”, decades before QAnon, false flags, “crisis actors” and Alex Jones, there was Milton William Cooper.


    1.⁠ ⁠What drew you to adapt the life of Milton William Cooper into a musical comedy, and how do you balance humour with the darker consequences of his conspiracy theories?

    I’d read about Bill Cooper during Trump’s first term, when I was trying to make sense of the election result and our own country’s acrimonious political landscape. It was immediately clear that Bill’s life lent itself incredibly well to our company’s brand of genre-bending ‘chaos theatre’, from the aliens and alleged assassination attempts to the very real and very violent consequences of his rhetoric, in both his own time and our own. We balance these two sides of Bill by leaning heavily into the dichotomy, combining conflicting theatrical styles throughout the show. 

    2.⁠ ⁠Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse is infamous for its reach, from being the “most shoplifted book” to influencing modern conspiracies. How does the play explore the legacy of his ideas in today’s political climate?

    Bill’s most immediate influence is going to be very clear, quite early on, without us needing to do very much at all. The moment Bill talks about his ‘Q’ security clearance, for example, alarm bells will ring for any audience member who follows US politics. However, it’s when he begins to thread these conspiracy theories around seismic events like Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Columbine, and build in militia, insurrections, and new world orders, that we really start to see his mark on what we now know to be the American right. I personally find the moments where Bill speaks about social issues in a way that would now be considered left-wing most interesting: when he is pro-choice, when he reprimands a caller to his radio show for homophobia, or when he repeatedly calls out police brutality against black Americans. In him, we often find a shared feeling, or moment, or thought, between the two sides of our increasingly divisive modern politics (I know, we were as surprised as you are). Although this is all sounds incredibly serious, I promise you, it’s very funny. 

    3.⁠ ⁠Musical comedy and conspiracy theories seem like an unusual pairing—what inspired you to use this genre, and how do the musical elements enhance the storytelling?

    I feel that musical elements generally enhance most stories, and, in BILL, various musical styles lead the audience from the 1940s all the way through to the 2000s, helping cement a sense of place and time in a sprawling and complicated story. The original score is made up of country-western, funk, musical-theatre, pop, pastiche, and an actual Latin requiem at one point (it’s about a paperclip), among others. Having said that, musical comedy is only one of the genres we utilise in BILL; we generally go with the style that serves that scene best, whether that be sketch comedy, puppetry, or ‘no way that’s actually verbatim’ verbatim. 

    4.⁠ ⁠With Cooper’s life encompassing everything from aliens to anti-government paranoia, what was the biggest challenge in adapting such a sprawling, controversial figure for the stage?

    From the get-go, the biggest issue was how to make it clear to the audience when something was factually true, when we were quoting, and when we were taking artistic license. After all, the show is essentially about what is true, and how much that matters. We finally found a work-around (actually dead simple, should have thought of it earlier), but it’s a bit of a spoiler so I’ll leave that there. Of course, the other issue is depicting a controversial historical figure. We opted for a docu-theatre approach. We try our best to avoid being either sanctimonious or celebratory and often, since we have so much source material, we just let Bill speak for himself, in his own words. 

    5.⁠ ⁠Audiences today are saturated with conspiracy content—how does BILL help us reflect on the power of these narratives while keeping the show entertaining and accessible?

    I think we allow the audience to reflect by very rarely asking them to do so. Theatre, if it wants to make a difference in any way whatsoever, needs to first and foremost be a good night out for its audiences and that is our main goal with BILL. Yes, the show is political, and yes, you could learn something, but think of it like a really really good lasagne that just has loads of vegetables that are good for you hidden in the sauce.

    Bill runs at Omnibus Theatre, 3 – 22 December 2024 – get tickets here.

    In Conversation With Cressida Brown

    Published on by ayoungishperspective1Leave a comment

    We sat down with Cressida Brown, director of Cutting the Tightrope: The Divorce of Politics from Art that’s currently at Arcola Theatre until 7th December. We recently reviewed the production awarding it a well deserved 4 stars.

    What inspired you to create Cutting the Tightrope, and why do you think it’s particularly relevant now?

    UK censorship over Palestine inspired me. Having always believed in the power of stories to change lives, I was amazed by theatre’s silence as an industry and profoundly disturbed by the cancelling of events linked to Palestine in high profile arts settings. By the time the Arts Council started to warn that ‘political statements’ made by individuals could cause ‘reputational risk’ and therefore ‘breach funding agreements’ I knew that I had to respond in some way – and that there were many more who felt the same. Who gets to deem what is political? How can you ask artists to remain politically neutral? All voices of dissent now – and in the future – are under threat. Now is the time to respond; to stand up and be counted. It is now or never.  

    How do you navigate the challenges of producing politically charged theatre in today’s climate?

    I think you have to have a fairly kamikaze spirit at the moment if you are going to be making political theatre. There are real fears – and realities – of being blacklisted, and the work being received aggressively. Ironically, it is this threat that makes the work feel so important and ensures the necessity of our speaking out. After so long directing political theatre, there has never been a show that has felt so meaningful and most likely to make an impact. I feel this so much, that I am willing for it to be my last.

    Why did you choose to keep the playwrights’ specific contributions anonymous, and how has that impacted their creative freedom?

    This was done foremostly to shield playwrights from any backlash they might receive – especially online. This is the horrific world we live in now!  It allowed them to express themselves with less fear. It was also partly a signal to the Arts Council, that this is how unsafe artists feel right now. As an instance of this, there is survey that has been sent out by the Writer’s Guild asking playwrights how much they feel their being commissioned or funded depends on their political views; and how much they censor themselves because of it. It is felt enough for data to be collected by their union.

    What message do you hope audiences take away from this series about censorship and artistic expression?

    I want people to know that this creeping repression of freedom of expression is something that effects all of us – not just the arts, whatever strata of society you come from. And not just if you have been vocal about Palestine. This insistence on ‘political neutrality’ – and who gets to deem what is political and what is not – is very dangerous for all of us in a world literally on fire with the climate emergency, the rise of the far right globally, and a governmental commitment to defence budgets growing. Voices of dissent are being stifled, and without dissent society cannot function, cannot imagine, differently.

    How significant is the Arcola Theatre’s decision to host this work, given the current climate of political caution in the arts?

    The Arcola have been heroic from the outset with their bravery programming the work, and they are an example to the rest of the industry who have largely remained silent. And in the future, they can hold their heads high. This has not only been with Cutting the Tightrope but also with hosting the extraordinary White Kite Collective, who since the end of last year have been performing the first-hand accounts of those in Gaza, as well as Palestinian music and poetry. All stories that are actively being suppressed or denied right now.

    What are your hopes for the future of politically engaged theatre, and how can the industry better support diverse voices?

    Bleak. I’m sorry but it’s true. This last year has really highlighted that it is only certain stories that get amplified, and all the lip service to diversity is just that. No one, it seems has learned anything from the biggest story of all: history.  I think the people in charge kid themselves that they are ultimately making the choices for the greater good. So that they continue to stage stories that might inspire change through metaphor rather than speaking out. The systems in place rely on indifference/silence and people being made to believe that simple social justice issues are too complicated to broach. Theatre will die an even quicker death without those in charge growing a stronger backbone.

    CUTTING THE TIGHTROPE: THE DIVORCE OF POLITICS FROM ARTis on at the Arcola Theatre, London from26th November – 7th December 2024