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By a Thread

By a Thread is a new ballet adaptation of the Odyssey, choreographed by Marika Brussel and performed for the first time in London at the Marylebone Theatre as part of the Warp and Weft programme in June 2024, starring Michaela Marrable as Penelope, Mayuko Suzuki as Athena, and Ryan Upton as Odysseus. Extracts of the ballet have also been shown at Hudson Ballet Theatre in New York and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Marika Brussel, Michaela Marrable, Mayuko Suzuki and Ryan Upton were interviewed during rehearsals in London in April and May 2024 by Christine Plastow, who also acted as a consultant for the project.

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Fragments - an interview with the creative team

Fragments, a new play from the company Potential Difference, co-written by director Russell Bender and classicist Laura Swift, evolved from an experiment at the Being Human Festival in 2014 and through a work-in-progress performance at Ovalhouse (London) in 2017. The finished production features original songs by composer Jon McLeod and lyricist Victoria Saxton, and shadow puppetry designed by puppeteers Jess Mabel Jones and Lori Hopkins. It ran at the Playground Theatre (London) 14th April-6th May 2023, and at the Old Fire Station, Oxford 12th-13th May 2023.

Fragments was inspired by the vast collections of ancient papyrus stored in museums around the world. It followed the search for Euripides’ lost play Cresphontes and put its surviving lines back on stage for the first time as a feature in eighteen centuries. The show also explored fragmentation as a human experience and took the audience on a journey around the fragments in their own minds: memories, assumptions, things heard. It was an irreverent take on an ancient lost play which celebrates the age-old need to fill in the gaps and tell stories, combining anarchic performance, lo-fi imagery, original music… and a whole lot of conjecture.

This round table conversation, involving Russell, Laura, Jon, Jess, Lori and Tom Espiner (performer and puppeteer), was recorded by Jasmine Hunter Evans and Christine Plastow in July 2023 in London.

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Kwame Owusu and Katherine Soper

Kwame Owusu directed Katherine Soper’s new adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae at the Lyric Hammersmith in July 2023.

Kwame Owusu’s work in theatre as a director includes Dreaming and Drowning (which he also wrote) at the Bush Theatre; The Bacchae at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre; Othello at ArtsEd; stoning mary at Arts University Bournemouth; and The Wolf from the Door at the John Thaw Studio. He has also worked as Staff Director on Romeo and Julie at the National Theatre and Sherman Theatre. Work as an assistant director includes Closer, Britannicus, Scandaltown, and Running With Lions at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Writing for theatre includes HORIZON for the Bush Theatre.

Katherine Soper’s first play, Wish List, won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2015. It was performed in 2017 at the Manchester Royal Exchange and Royal Court Theatre and has since been produced in Germany, Turkey, and South Korea. She has been nominated for the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright, and won the Stage Debut Award for Best Writer. Other works include The Small Hours (National Theatre Connections, 2019), Calls from Far Away (BBC Radio 4, 2022), and The Bacchae (Lyric Hammersmith, 2023). She is currently under commission to the Royal Court Theatre.