Tag: interview

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Eliane Correa

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with Eliane Correa. Acclaimed Cuban-British pianist, composer and cultural ambassador. Eliane recently toured with Hans Zimmer, and will be curating a special show celebrating the centenary of Celia Cruz with an all-female salsa band. Elaine performs at the Jazz Cafe on 25th April. Tickets are available here.

La Linea, London’s biggest and longest running Latin music festival, runs from 20th April – 6th May. Tickets here

What does celebrating Celia Cruz’s centenary with an all-female salsa band mean to you personally as a Cuban artist working across cultures?

I’m very grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to put together such a stellar lineup of fantastic musicians who also happen to be women. We lack visibility, so I decided to prioritise doing this with just women as a public statement. I hope this is the first of many shows we do as Las Salseras. I would love to keep this project going.

I’m as much Cuban as I am Argentinian, European, and now also a Londoner. My entire life has been about working across cultures and looking to create space for multicultural exchange. Celia Cruz herself moved to the USA from Cuba at 35 years old and met salseros from other Latin American and Latin diasporic cultures and communities, which contributed to her unique sound without making her expression any less Cuban.

Having toured with Hans Zimmer, how has moving between cinematic worlds and salsa stages reshaped your understanding of musical storytelling?

This is a great question. I think it’s made me think about cultural decoding a lot: for example, the way a Cuban audience receives and reacts to a Cuban “salsa” orchestra is quite different from the way it’s received by a London audience, and then if you put this same band in Kinshasa, Calcutta, or Miami, the audience reactions will be different.

Whether we like it or not, musics that aren’t “mainstream” (which is quite a Western-centric concept in itself, by the way!) can be interpreted in wildly different ways depending on what the listener’s “cultural decoding tools” are saying. I think cinematic music and pop music are genres that unite us all across cultures: the way we understand them around the world is relatively similar.

I think I’ve started keeping this in mind more when I compose music, arrange, or select and shape a repertoire. In some of my projects, I keep this idea of who am I putting this together for at the forefront. In my personal original projects, though, I just write from my heart, and it’ll be what it’ll be—I relinquish control over how it will be received.

A project such as this homage to the Queen of Salsa at the Jazz Café has me asking myself: how do I best do justice to her rich, amazing legacy for the audience—not for me with my Cuban-Argentinian-European ear, but for the people who will be at this show to have an amazing experience where they leave sweaty, happy, with their hearts full of music and a renewed love for Celia.

Salsa has historically been male-dominated—what barriers still exist for women, and how are projects like Las Salseras actively dismantling them?

We have to keep in mind that the struggle for equality is a recent occurrence within the wider frame of history. It’s normal that salsa, having grown in the mid-to-late twentieth century, has been male-dominated throughout most of its history and still is today.

We’re just part of a process that is still a work in progress, which is why it’s important to create spaces for women to thrive in, just as is happening in STEM and other male-dominated fields. Of course there is a barrier, because this is all still quite new, and everything new requires a reconfiguring of public perception.

Las Salseras is just a small part of a bigger push to normalise our presence in all spaces and level out the historical imbalance.

How do platforms like La Línea change the visibility and career trajectories of female Latin musicians in the UK and Europe?

This year La Línea has an unprecedented number of female artists in its lineup. Again, all this does is counterbalance the normalised standard of male-dominated line-ups—without compromising on quality (this is very important!). We are not tokens—we turn up and we deliver.

The volume of high-quality female and female-led acts in La Línea this year makes the statement that we belong, and that there is room for us to simply exist and do our thing in spaces that have historically been populated by a majority of men.

Every time there’s a group of women making music on a stage, it’s a small grain of sand of visibility added to the process of normalising our presence. It’s great, and I love that I’ve been given a chance to be a small part of this process.

When curating an all-female ensemble, what values or energies are you prioritising beyond technical excellence?

Actually, it’s just technical excellence, which in my opinion includes understanding the musical language we are operating in. I don’t really believe in “feminine energy,” etc. I just want to play with really, really good musicians who bring good vibes, and I put Las Salseras together to counterbalance the lack of female presence in our scene.

I dream of a world where women are no longer bearing the weight of the differential—where it’s completely normal to have a killer salsa band that just happens to be all women (and never, ever have to hear “you play like a man” again!).

What do you hope younger Latina musicians in London take away from seeing this tribute on a major festival stage?

Without visibility, it’s hard for younger generations of female Latin musicians to even internalise that this is something to aspire to. We’re hoping that this can be a small step in paving the path for younger Latin women musicians to take up space and see this as something realistic to achieve.

And also, for them to continue making more space for future generations beyond the reach that we have right now—the way Celia did for us back in the day.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Jez Bond

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Artistic Director Jez Bond, Executive Director Catherine McKinney, and the whole team at Park Theatre announced further details of Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] 4, the next instalment of its hugely popular fundraising comedy spectacular, which returns from 11 May – 27 June 2026 with the most ambitious version yet. We hold this exclusive dialogue with Jez.

Each performance features a different unrehearsed guest sheriff. What continues to surprise you about that format?

I think it’s a perfect blend of comic structure and comic chaos. Looking on, it might not seem like it all the time but the cast are utterly in control of every moment. Interestingly the blocking (unless we specifically allow it not to be for a short time) is the same from person to person; which is all about the skills of how the actors manipulate the stage space. The star is always exactly where we want them to be – which is particularly important, of course, for the jokes that rely on them facing the wrong way or addressing the wrong person! But the surprise is also that there’s plenty of space for each actor to bring their flair to the table, to portray the character in a different way and – here’s the real answer, I think – for the audience to enjoy the different live reactions on the stars’ faces. Many people come more than once and you might see one actor taking it very seriously, another trying to but with a glint in their eye, yet another might have a number of corpses throughout (yes, I know it’s a murder mystery but I’m not talking about dead bodies, I’m talking about the kind or corpse where you allow yourself to visibly laugh).

How does the success of Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] directly impact the theatre’s ability to develop new work and support artists?

We need to raise around £600,000 per year on top of regular box office income to stay afloat. Because we believe that theatre is for everybody, and a big part of accessibility is affordability, we don’t want to charge West End prices. We also do a huge amount of work in the community, from programmes with young people through to our flagship dementia work. As such, as a charity, we need to make up our shortfall by fundraising. We don’t get any core funding from the Arts Council or local government – and with individual donations, smaller scale events and trust and foundation support we’re able to bring in half of what we need each year. The Whodunnit show, running every other year, makes up that gap. It’s not exaggeration to say that it’s totally vital to our continued operation. In terms of supporting new work and new artists, this is a big commitment of ours. Across our two spaces we programme more new work than revivals and we also provide space and support to a number of companies and individuals each year to develop their work.

What does it say about Park Theatre’s identity that an event like this has become part of its DNA?

Ha! Financially I suppose it says that this creative idea borne out of need is now a regular fixture necessary to stay alive. I hope for our patrons it says that Park Theatre is known for exciting, fun work and for being able to harness the incredible power and generosity of its high profile friends (all of whom perform, I must add, for free to support the charity).  I should also add that as a fundraiser tickets for this one are purposefully significantly higher – as it’s doing this show that enables us to run for the rest of the year. But even so we’re keen to ensure some lower price tickets and booking early is the best strategy as prices may change based on demand. Conversely there are also a limited number of standing tickets released on the day of each performance at our discretion. We are also going to be doing Lottery tickets – a small number of tickets for each performance at a reduced price. Full details on how to enter that will be announced closer to the show.

When audiences leave Graveside at the end of the evening, what do you hope stays with them?

So much! From the wonderful, themed food and cocktails throughout the night to the exciting touches across the building – whether that be actors conversing in character in the bar, or the addition of hay bales and whiskey barrels throughout. Of course, on stage I think there’s a few gags that will stay with them for a long time (there are still people who tell me they haven’t forgotten a particular gag in the first reading we did of this new script a year ago). But overall, I think the feeling you’re left with after Whodunnit (perhaps more so than ever in this all-encompassing immersive version) is the joy of having experienced something truly special that will never be repeated.

For tickets and listing,  see https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/whodunnit-unrehearsed-4/

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Emme Hensel

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with Emme Hensel, co-principal flautist for the National Youth Orchestra’s Spring tour ‘Collide’.

Dates and times for Collide are 9th April 2026 at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, and 11th April at Royal Festival Hall, London, both at 7:30pm – Tickets here

Collide explores huge themes like love, courage and conflict. As a musician, how does it feel to bring such powerful stories to life through your flute?

Being able to bring such powerful stories to life through my flute feels almost like I am becoming the characters in the pieces myself. Not only can I feel the emotions of my characters, but when playing with the rest of the orchestra, I can feel the whole story coming to life around me. Having such a variety of emotions to explore whilst I am playing also adds a lot of excitement, as well as opportunity for creativity and exploration of sound, which I love.

For many teenagers in the audience, this might be their first orchestral concert. What do you hope they feel when they hear the orchestra play?

I hope that the teenagers in the audience who haven’t been exposed to orchestral music before are captivated by the collective power of so many teenage musicians working together to produce something bigger than them. I think that one of the incredible things about orchestral music is the way in which we all have to work together and communicate with each other through our playing, in order to convey emotion to the audience.

NYO offers free tickets for teenagers to make orchestral music accessible. Why do you think it’s important that young people get the chance to experience music like this live?

I think that it is so important that young people get to experience orchestral music because it provides a way for them to connect with others and be a part of a new community. The experience of seeing the orchestra live (as opposed to streaming it at home) will allow them to be immersed in the atmosphere created by the music. This is really exciting as it means that the teenagers can experience the story within the music firsthand, and hopefully get even more enjoyment out of the overall experience!

When you’re performing something as dramatic as Romeo and Juliet, do you feel like you’re telling the story through the music rather than just playing the notes?

I believe that with something as dramatic as Romeo and Juliet, that already has such a well known storyline, we as performers are provided with a vessel to help us pass even more emotion to the audience. This makes it thrilling to play because of the creative element of telling the story as well as playing the notes. Due to the story being so well known, we also have room to provide the audience with our own interpretations of the feelings of characters in certain scenes, which is a lot of fun.

The National Youth Orchestra brings together 160 teenage musicians. What is the energy like when you all perform together on stage?

I think the energy of an orchestra of teenagers, especially when most of us are playing repertoire for the first time, is something incredibly unique and amazing. I hope that with both our playing, and the creative side of NYO with our encores, we can inspire this generation of young people to gain the same enjoyment of classical music that we get to experience through NYO. I love the buzz of making music with such close friends. It’s an amazing feeling to create something so spectacular, that means so much to so many people, with those who you care about a lot. I feel incredibly lucky to get to play with such brilliant musicians, and brilliant people.     

You’re performing music inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle, Tristan und Isolde and Romeo and Juliet. Which piece in the programme excites you the most to play and why?

I love that all of the music in the Collide tour tells such vivid stories. It makes the music thrilling to play because it makes you feel like you’re actually playing a part in the story itself. In Romeo and Juliet in particular, I can hear all of the characters, who I knew growing up, coming to life.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Joshua LeClair

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with Joshua LeClair about Midnight in the Toyshop, starting at St Martin’s Theatre this April. Joshua’s stage credits include Matilda (international tour), Road Show (Union Theatre), Hello Again (Hope Theatre) and voice roles for Disney and CBeebies. He is currently pursuing a PhD in musical theatre performance and training at Goldsmiths.

This show runs from 7th April til 12th April at St Martin’s Theatre – Tickets here: https://www.perform.org.uk/contact/live-events/choose-event-month/midnight-in-the-toyshop

Midnight in the Toyshop has such a magical premise. What excited you most about being part of this production?

My favourite part of being a performer is getting to be part of the creation of new musicals, so I jumped at the chance to perform in Midnight in the Toyshop in the West End! And getting to run around as a magical unicorn for a few weeks? Icing on the cake.

What kind of atmosphere are you hoping to help create as the toyshop comes to life on stage?

I think the show will bring different things to everyone. Children will hopefully experience the wonder of watching their favourite toys come to life and being invited to be part of the experience, and adults will hopefully feel the nostalgia of cherished childhood memories of their own. Overall, I hope the show offers an invitation to jump into a world of imagination and play that they get to take home with them after the show. 

You’ve trained both in Canada and the UK, at Sheridan College and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. How have those different environments shaped you as a performer?

Training in Canada gave me my core technique; I credit Sheridan College and the excellent teachers I had there with making me an artist. When training in the UK, I learned how art becomes real in the world by experiencing the way theatre is so uniquely and deeply woven into the fabric of British culture.

Now that you’re pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, how has academic research begun to influence your practical work on stage?

I’m really interested in the way teaching and learning happen in musical theatre contexts. I’ve been much more aware of the way singing, dancing and acting are taught and how it interacts with the alchemical process of creating musical theatre within the performer. Everyone is supported toward their brilliant performance in a different way, and yet each performance belongs in the world we’ve created!

If someone is bringing their family to the show for the first time, what would you love them to discover together?

I’d love for first-time theatregoers to discover the necessity of live performance in an age of increased division and solitude. There is a magic of “being-with”, an aura, to experiencing the unfolding of art in community with others. I hope new audiences can sense the value of deliberately choosing how we spend our time, presence and attention in a way that can only be found in real space and real time. There, we can witness and collaborate in a collective artistic experience.

You can see Joshua playing the role of Stardust in Perform Productions’ new family musical Midnight in the Toyshop, for a limited Easter holidays run at St Martin’s Theatre in London’s West End, from Tuesday 7 to Sunday 12 April. Tickets are available to book here: https://www.perform.org.uk/contact/live-events/choose-event-month/midnight-in-the-toyshop

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IN CONVERSATION WITH: H Sneyd 

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with H Sneyd, an actor in Open Aire Theatre’s Managed Approach – a new, semi-verbatim play about the UK’s first legalised red-light district.

This show comes to Riverside Studios from 13th to 25th April 2026 – Tickets here

The play is rooted in very recent real-life events. What drew you to be part of telling this particular story?

Jules Coyle, our writer, has done such an incredible job with the script and the blend between the verbatim and fictional scenes was so exciting for me. Also, sex work is still so taboo for many people and I think there’s a real dissonance between the normalisation of online sex work compared to on-street sex work. Holding up a mirror to these experiences feels important in order to encourage larger conversations. 

You perform verbatim material drawn from real interviews. How did you approach the responsibility of giving voice to someone else’s lived experience?

I feel the most important objective when performing verbatim material is trying to make it feel as truthful as possible. More so than fictional scripts, you’re able to tease out the underlying intention, or thought processes, or relationship the speaker has with the interviewer through the language they use. I’ve found it useful to consider, ‘Why has she chosen to restart her sentence here?’, ‘What could be the rest of the line she chose to trail off here and why has she trailed off?’. It’s important to realise that you can’t completely represent a real person when you only have limited material. I think our job is to build a character which feels honest and naturalistic that authentically embodies the verbatim material. 

What has surprised you about the emotional range of the piece as it plays in front of an audience?

The relationship between Kate and Abby (the play’s fictional mother and daughter) is incredibly layered and the script reflects such a complex range of emotions within the dynamic that has really resonated with audiences. This is particularly with mother/daughter pairs or often mums coming alone and seeing their own combative arguments, giggles and fears of safety reflected onstage. It’s been really amazing to witness their reactions.

Has the piece evolved since its Edinburgh Fringe run, and how has it affected your performance?

Having more time during this rehearsal period has been so lovely, and coming back to the characters definitely feels like returning to an old skin. A consequence of having a slightly different cast definitely changes the dynamic and the approaches to characters, which is so exciting. I’ve been particularly enjoying our directors’ encouragement to explore physicality and embodiment to really consider the nuances of each character.

What kinds of conversations have you noticed audiences having after seeing the show?

I think what is most exciting about the post-show discussions is that, after hearing all the perspectives on the Managed Approach, people can’t come to a definite moral conclusion on it. There is so much nuance to the Managed Approach, both Dani and Ellen (the verbatim roles I play) openly admit that it didn’t completely remove the danger of sex work, even without the threat of police intervention. Managed Approach has acted as such an incredible springboard for wider conversations about women’s safety and sex work, and how it is approached both at an institutional level and on a personal level, especially by other women. 

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Shobana Jeyasingh

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We Caliban, the latest work from one of the UK’s most distinctive choreographers Shobana Jeyasingh, is a danced reimagining of Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest through the eyes of Prospero’s ‘monster’. We Caliban is at Sadler’s Wells East from 21 to 23 April, tickets here.

What inspired you to reinterpret The Tempest through Caliban’s perspective in We Caliban?
I had spent a fair bit of time reading The Tempest at university. and was captivated by it. My focus was naturally on Prospero, the lead character. In recent years I caught up with the discourse and writings around Caliban and I was amazed, in retrospect, on how the ill treatment of Caliban by Prospero had totally escaped my attention.  My own connection to Caliban, as a brown person encountering Europe, seemed interesting to explore.

How do your personal experiences as a British Asian woman shape the cultural and political themes in this work?
My grandparents in Sri Lanka and India were very much products of colonial history. They went to schools run by the British, learnt English, changed their clothing habits and adapted to another culture My parents’ immense admiration for the English education system funded my travel to the UK to be a student of English Literature. 

European empire building changed the fortunes of my forefathers as it did Caliban’s.

What was your creative process in translating Shakespeare’s text into a visceral contemporary dance piece?
Reading the play with Caliban in mind is a different experience. My biggest decision was not to perform the whole play but only the scenes that impacted Caliban. Most of these scenes were in reported speech in the original play. Therefore there was less “translating” but more creating anew.

Can you talk about your collaboration with co-dramaturg Uzma Hameed and how it influenced the final production?
It was a wonderful experience working with Uzma, We have very similar life experiences as British Asian women who studied English Lit at uni. The many conversations I had with her were crucial in shaping my engagement with the play. She was also an important ally in researching historical documents which influenced what is seen on stage.

I also worked on a different level with Priyamvada Gopal who is professor of post-colonial studies at Cambridge. She was an invigorating and inspirational woman to talk to. We discussed the play in some depth, especially its post-colonial readings. Her reading lists were influential in how I dealt with The Tempest on stage. Priya had interesting things to say about the play as a parable of power. She helped me read Caliban’s alleged assault on Miranda by pointing me to similar incidents in EM Forster’s Passage To India and Harper’s To Kill a Mocking Bird. These elevated the Tempest incident into an encounter between cultures and races rather than one between two individuals.

How do design elements like video, music and lighting contribute to the storytelling in We Caliban?
Dance, while being the main medium, cannot be the sole one in certain stories. Music, light and video design at times provide the framework within which the dance rests or add additional layers to complete the dramaturgy.  Different media were ‘choreographed’ to narrate different bits of the dramaturgy to complement the dance choreography. For example, Queen Elizabeth I’s letter giving permission for Walter Raleigh to annex non-Christian territories in the New World became part of the audio score. The re- naming of place names by Columbus and other European travellers is dealt with by projections.

What conversations or reflections do you hope audiences will leave with after seeing the piece?
Whether they are familiar with The Tempest or not I hope that they will find We Caliban intriguing, entertaining and enjoyable.  One of dance’s unique qualities is that you communicate in a medium where you don’t need to separate thought from feeling or emotion. I would like We Caliban to engage emotions and sensibilities and, through those, provoke thought.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Noah Wild

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We sat down for an exclusive interview with Noah Wild, an Oxford-based theatre maker and (fairly) recent university graduate. Their one-person play With All My Fondest Love goes on tour across the country following an acclaimed ★★★★ run at The Edinburgh Fringe.

 The play is touring to venues in Oxford, London and Brighton this spring – Tickets here.

With All My Fondest Love is rooted in the letters and diaries of your grandparents. What first inspired you to turn their story into a piece of theatre?

I started writing With All My Fondest Love during my final summer of University. I’d had my heart broken and, struggling with all the complicated feelings that created, realised I was probably experiencing love for the first time. It was around that point that I chanced upon a box of my grandparents’ love letters in the loft, dusty and unread. My grandmother was married by my age, so I became interested in what it means to conceive of love at this young age and how our understanding of love might change across generations and our own lifetime. 

Then, in the post, my uncle sent stacks of diaries written by my grandad. He was a strange diary writer: as soon as anything important happens, he stops writing. With no memories of my grandparents, these letters and diaries allowed me to discover a long, complex life story I’d never been aware of. But it’s those gaps that With All My Fondest Love is most focused on – can you really actually ever know your own family? 

Your play brings together three generations through its storytelling. What have you learned about love and relationships from looking so closely at your grandparents’ lives?

One of my favourite sections of With All My Fondest Love unites my grandparents, parents and myself on a series of train journeys. At their core, each generation is comparable, even passing through the same train stations. However, my grandparents’ marriage doesn’t fall within our normal definitions of love, it was bumpy and open-ended. One of the play’s most moving moments explores terminal illness and love is expressed through simple actions of care, rather than grand romantic declarations. Love becomes harder to pin down in the later stages of their marriage but it’s always there, perhaps just redefined. That’s had a big impact on my own expectations of what a lifetime commitment to loving someone might involve. 

How has working on this play changed the way you relate to your own family history?

It’s particularly changed how I relate to my grandmother, as she died eight years before I was born. Now, I think I have a much more human and nuanced connection to her life, in a particular an appreciation of how she managed to overcome neo-natal loss. I hope the complexity and contradictions of her character come across in the play. 

What’s been most interesting, however, is to see my Dad re-evaluate his connection to his parents, discovering an interior life to his parents alongside him. So it’s been beautiful to share in these surprises and discoveries – particularly when they have challenged or contradicted how he has usually described his parents. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time he watched the play alongside his brother, that was a special moment!

Carrying a solo performance requires a unique kind of presence and stamina. What has been the most challenging and rewarding aspect of holding the stage alone?

It felt very awkward and lonely at first, as I really missed having someone to react to as an actor! We’ve just finished rehearsing for the upcoming tour, two years after the play was last performed and I’d forgotten how exhausting performing alone is. And sometimes I do wish I’d written less lines for myself to learn…! 

But it is utterly amazing to hold a room completely in your own hands, slightly terrifying but thrilling. My grandfather, as a keen amateur actor and speech giver, would have loved to have his own one-person play, I think. So, something definitely runs in the family. 

If someone is coming to the show knowing very little about it, what would you love them to experience?

I hope With All My Fondest renews an interest in your own family history. My favourite part of performing the play is hearing about the amazing grandparents of our audiences (many of which deserve a play all of their own!). Through uniting three generations together, it explores how people, at different stages of life, are able to pick themselves up after loss and keep on living. I think there’s something profoundly hopeful and redemptive in that. So overall the play feels like a long, warm hug, something emotional but deeply comforting. Tender is the perfect word to describe it!

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Mithra Malek

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A young girl stands at the altar. A nation holds its breath.

Blending the brutal beauty of ancient tragedy with voices of today, this bold new production replaces the traditional chorus with filmed testimonies from women across cultures, interwoven with live contemporary folk music that bridges East and West. The testimonies – raw, intimate and fiercely honest – reflect on motherhood, loss, duty and war, reframing the myth for a modern world and offering a powerful counterpoint to a story shaped by the decisions of men.

A story of sacrifice, parenthood and the human cost of war – then and now. Tickets here.

Iphigenia is caught in a war she did not choose; what drew you to exploring her agency within such an impossible situation? 

The thing about Iphigenia is she’s completely powerless when it comes to the circumstances of the play: she has no authority over her fate. But what’s interesting is the ways she tries to find her own agency within these circumstances she has no control over. She goes from begging her father for her life, to reconciling with the fact that she can’t change his mind, and trying to find her own power in the fact that she is being sacrificed, stating how she refuses to go to her death like a ‘coward’, That’s very interesting to explore as an actor, how she is able to totally reframe situations with such conviction. 

Having worked extensively with Shakespeare, how did stepping into the heightened world of Greek tragedy reshape your approach to language and emotion? 

It’s a good question and something I’m still exploring/thinking about. But, at its core, it’s all about trusting the language and letting it guide you, and really considering the meaning of each word. 

This production weaves real testimonies from mothers affected by war into the myth; how does that contemporary layer change the way you think about Iphigenia’s story? 

What’s fascinating about working on an Ancient text and weaving modern day testimonies is it really shows how little has changed in terms of the circumstances people find themselves in, in terms of war and loss (which always seem so pointless). We never really learn or change when it comes to these things. At the same time, it’s also remarkable how, on a human level, humans today are experiencing the exact same emotions they were thousands of years ago. I always find it interesting the way the human experience, specifically in terms of love and connection, feels so consistent. 

Iphigenia’s fate is decided by forces far beyond her control; what have you discovered about her strength or complexity while preparing the role? 

Like I mentioned above, what’s interesting about Iphegenia is the way she tries to find her own power in a situation in which she is completely powerless. That resolve is always a gift to portray as an actor. 

You’ve moved between screen work like Anatomy of a Scandal and classical theatre; what keeps drawing you back to these epic, demanding texts? 

I think these classical roles keep coming back to me! The feeling is mutual. I love words, and feel I have an affinity with the language in these texts, which just came naturally to me. I honestly find rich language much easier to work with. People think of classical texts as being harder but I think that’s a myth. 

For audiences encountering Iphigenia today, what do you hope resonates most strongly about her story? 

I hope people leave the play thinking about the power we have as people. We watch these ridiculous and wild circumstances happening over and over again, and ask how. It’s because people just accept it, and we need to be reminded of our own power and how important it is to not just stand by. But of course, this can sometimes be difficult.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Nikol Kollars

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We sat down with Nikol Kollars for a quick chat about her upcoming project, Fickle Eulogy. For ticketing and info, please find here.

Fickle Eulogy balances humour with raw grief—how did comedy become a tool for telling the truth rather than softening it?

Humour was necessary to counter the heavy parts of Fickle Eulogy. I was aware while writing it that too much intensity and darkness can drag us down into depression and boredom. But using comedy to actually touch on the rawness, to lean into it rather than distract is a powerful tool. Shining a comedic light and absurdity onto something overwhelming provides a greater release. It helped me with my own grief process, so I felt it might help others navigate their relationship with grief. 

Writing a eulogy is both deeply personal and strangely performative. What did that tension unlock for you as a solo performer?

The tension between the personal and the performative unlocked a radical honesty for me. In a eulogy, an intimate and personal relationship is expected to be publicly available. Then we feel a social pressure to present a coherent, “acceptable” version of the deceased and our relationship with them. We rarely see adults being their true, contradictory selves in their most vulnerable moments. By leaning into the theatricality of it, I found the freedom to explore the blurred lines my character encounters, but also those shared between me as the performer and my character. The stage gives me permission to tap into the darkest, most fleeting parts of my psyche without the fear of social fallout. As a solo performer, I get to embrace the “whole rollercoaster ride.” Early on, the challenge was not letting the words destroy me. I had to learn how to be deeply connected to the grief while maintaining the craft of the performance. Ultimately, this tension transformed the play into a vessel for catharsis. In a way that in the writing process it hadn’t brought me.  I wonder what kind of collective healing we would find if we all allowed ourselves to be this raw and unfiltered during our final goodbyes. 

The presence of an unhelpful AI in the show feels darkly contemporary—what does it reveal about how we outsource meaning and comfort in moments of loss?

Since I wrote Fickle Eulogy in 2021, AI has evolved at an alarming rate. Now more than ever people use AI as a therapist or a companion. Even though we know the algorithms are only regurgitating what humans essentially told them to. But I can see why some people prefer generic catchphrase pacifier algorithms, to messy and complicated humans.  Future generations will show how desensitized we are becoming and how much real danger we face in losing our capability to contemplate, theorize, and analyze. Maybe even really feel. 

How did shaping multiple characters inside one grieving body change the way you understood Ann’s inner world?

While allowing space for the sadness, rage, frustration, doubt, and loneliness, the unique tones and textures of the characters in the play were free to reveal themselves. There is so much freedom in those characters. Giving permission and discovering through the characters made me realize that Ann has bravely surrendered to the chaos of grief. And that we are not different from her if we allow ourselves to find ourselves in Ann.

Grief from Covid carries a specific kind of rupture and unfinishedness—what felt essential to honour about that experience on stage?

It seems that so many of us have not acknowledged how traumatic the pandemic was, regardless of individual experience. For those of us who lost someone during that time, the uncertainty, panic, and frantic distrust in the media and governments added even more fuel to the fire. This play unites us in that shared experience. Knowing my mother was essentially alone in her last days breaks my heart over and over. In this strange way while she is honoured in this piece, maybe I can assuage my regret for not being with her, for being so far away to begin with. A Scottish friend of mine lives in California and her father in Scotland died from covid19 that first month in 2020. She had to watch her fathers funeral online at 3 o’clock in the morning. 

After performing this work across different cities, what shifts—if any—have you noticed in how audiences respond to loss, humour, and intimacy?

I have had a wide variety of responses during the performance as well as afterwards, and they are not necessarily defined by the city or culture. I have had some performances in which the audience was reserved, in a city that theatre is a cultural institution. But afterwards, I am greeted with warmth, emotion and an eagerness to share. Sometimes it depends on the particular audience that comes and how they collectively decide to which extent they will experience the play. I have had performances in which an international audience is completely immersed and engaged in theatrical exchange, laughing and crying. I have also enjoyed seeing a balanced mix of genders. Many men attend the show and give testimonials afterwards with their feelings about loss, how vulnerability is strength, how they feel acknowledged. I would love to perform Fickle Eulogy in Ireland and Mexico, it seems their relationship with death is celebratory and familiar. 

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Rio Barker

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We sat down with Rio Barker to chat about English National Ballet’s new production of My First Ballet: Cinderella. Running from 1 – 12 of April at Sadler’s Wells East, tickets are available here.

As a performer, how do you approach telling the story in a way that captivates such young viewers who may be seeing ballet for the very first time? 

    Personally, as a performer I try to make everything as clear and honest as possible. With younger audiences, I think it’s really important to fully commit to the character and exaggerate certain moments that come with it, so the story is easy to follow. I try to focus a lot on the intention behind every movement, making sure it’s not just steps but something they can understand and connect to. It’s about being playful, present, and really believing in the world you’re creating on stage, or you risk the audience not fully believing it either.

    You trained at The Hammond School and have already performed a wide range of classical and contemporary works. How has that training prepared you for performing in a production aimed specifically at young audiences? 

      My training and experience thus far has given me a strong technical base but has also encouraged a lot of versatility and performance quality. I believe this is important for this kind of production where the choreography calls for clarity and dynamics but also nurtures and encourages you to show personality, character and a unique perspective. Being exposed to both classical and contemporary work helped me become adaptable and more aware of how to use my body to communicate different styles and emotions. That’s especially useful when performing for younger audiences, where clarity and expression are just as important as technique.

      You have performed choreography from artists such as Arielle Smith, Andrew McNicol, David Lichine and Marius Petipa. How do those different choreographic influences shape the way you approach your role in My First Ballet: Cinderella? 

        Working with such a range of choreographers has truly been such a privilege and gift, as it has not only taught me how to adapt quickly and bring different qualities to movement, but it has given me experience on how to best bring to life and handle different characters and their stories. For example, Petipa’s work requires precision and clarity, while contemporary choreographers encourage more freedom and individuality. In My First Ballet: Cinderella, I try to combine those influences – keeping the technique clean while also allowing space for personality and storytelling. In this production, I’m extremely grateful to be performing multiple roles, including ‘The Prince’ and ‘Autumn Fox’, which require very different qualities and internal narratives. The ‘Autumn Fox’ is cunning, sharp, and highly expressive in his movement, while ‘The Prince’ is more grounded, kind, and determined. Both roles are challenging in their own ways, but they allow me to draw on the experience and exposure I’ve gained from my previous training and performances.

        Ballet storytelling relies heavily on movement rather than words. What do you think are the most important tools a dancer has when communicating emotion and narrative to a very young audience? 

        I think clarity and connection are the most important tools. For a young audience, everything needs to feel very clear, so I focus on making my intentions obvious through my movement, facial expressions, and use of the upper body. Connecting closely to the music also really helps, as it guides the emotion and energy of the story. I try to make every detail count, so even small gestures help tell the story and keep the audience engaged. 

        Productions like My First Ballet often serve as a child’s first introduction to dance. What do you hope young audience members take away from seeing the show, and perhaps even from watching you perform on stage?

          I hope they leave feeling inspired and excited, having understood the story, and connected with the characters. If it’s their first experience of ballet, I’d love for it to feel magical but also accessible, so they feel it’s something they can enjoy and maybe even try themselves. If even a few children leave wanting to dance or return to the theatre, that would be really special. I also hope they take away a sense of kindness, courage, and maybe a deeper appreciation for the magic of nature.