“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
Graham Greene, The ENd of the Affair, 1951
How We work
We firmly believe that every good story has already been told at least once - which makes it incredibly difficult to stand out with new writing these days, especially in theatre. Simultaneously, we have a deep respect for the writers works that have shaped our society over the last four millennia.
Our aim is to make work that is rooted firmly in those stories that have, in different iterations, existed for sometimes thousands of years but make them accessible, relevant and resonate for a contemporary audience.
The way we work begins with a feeling. Sometimes this comes from a story, sometimes from an impulse out of the world around us. When we know what we’re meant to say we get into the rehearsal room and find the performance. We aim to present the story in the form it needs, sometimes this means breaking it apart entirely, we leave our preconceptions outside and explore, that is what the Experimentorium is for.
Photo:
Paul Alistair Collins
Our Story
The adventure began at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2016 when Laura and Jonathan were drawn together by a shared interest in postmodern theatre, striped shirts and Tom Waits. Following months of classes, workshops and evenings at the bar, Laura cast Jonathan in her production of ‘My Name’s Macbeth’ and the Experimentorium was opened.
‘My Name’s Macbeth’ is, in essence, true to Shakespeare’s play, first performed in 1606. We kept the language and rough narrative structure, but distilled it down to one of the core themes the play explores - what is nowadays known as post-traumatic stress disorder. This then required a rearrangement of certain characters, scenes and lines, which resulted in an hour-long fever dream that takes you through the spiralling mind of a soldier unable to deal with the trauma he has witnessed.
Our next voyage was into Georg Büchner’s unfinished masterpiece ‘Woyzeck’ (1836), again focussing on the unravelling of the protagonist’s mind, distilled into a 30-minute silent film put into conversation with an exploration of the performance principles of the visionary theorist, Antonin Artaud.
Subsequent interventions with Henrik Ibsen, Edgar Allen Poe and contemporary writing found us setting up camp in Germany and pursuing independent work whilst not losing sight of our commitment to making work rooted in classic stories and making them accessible, relevant and resonant to contemporary audiences, concerns and performance practice.
