DIRECTING WORK
Let The Right One In
The Mack Theatre | Jack Thorne | 2024
Creative Team
Director- Barry Fitzgerald
Assistant Director- Lilly Butcher
Designer- Cory Shipp
Sound Designer- Ellie Isherwood
Lighting Designer- Alex Musgrave
Softboy
The Backstage Theatre | Aisling Towl | 2024
Softboy examines the mainstreaming of incel culture and the impact this has on the lives of young people. At a London secondary school, Nadine and Kay muddle through their first queer relationship, whilst Jared and Amber try to navigate the end of theirs. At a prestigious New York university, Rebecca attempts to separate the personal, the professional and the political as the pressure mounts around her.
Creative Team
Director- Lilly Butcher
Writer- Aisling Towl
Producer- María Guevara
Musical Arrangements- Livs Needham
Image of an Unknown Young Woman
The Backstage Theatre | Elinor Cook | 2024
Creative Team
Director- Connie Treves
Assistant Director- Lilly Butcher
Designer- Anna Kelsey
Sound Designer- Ellie Isherwood
Lighting Designer- Peter Harrisson
Movement Director- Hannah Jessop
Blank- Scenes
Mountview Studios | Alice Birch | 2024
Studio production of segments from Alice Birch's "Blank". This production centred Birch's themes of class and youth, bringing them to the forefront of the piece.
Multiroles performed by
Daisy Chiu
Grace Cunningham
Gabriel Lumsden
Daniel Popescu
In Memoriam
Exeter Maketank and Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Fiona Winning and Lucy Way | 2023
This show was the debut production of "BossyBitchProductions", of which I am a co-founder. "In Memoriam" is a black comedy which follows the hours preceding the funeral of Graham Stephen Woodman, a Grandad from nowhere. Expect family fallouts, the occasional blasphemy and a very, very late hearse. Reviewed 5* Theatre Scotland.
Creative Team
Co-Director- Lilly Butcher
Co-Director and Co-Writer- Fiona Winning
Co-Writer- Lucy Way
Production Designer- Harriet White
Frankenstein
Exeter Northcott Theatre | Nick Dear | 2023
This reintepretation of Mary Shelley's classic tale featured a genderqueer casting of 'the Creature'. I strove to enforce elements of gothic-inspired queer fashion within the aesthetic vision. This show implimented heavily artaudian physical theatre in a cohesive ensemble, representative of the Creature's development and their meeting of prejudice throughout society. Much of this movement was devised as a collective, implimenting themes of childlike development as a stimulus. Particularly significant was the genderqueer casting of 'the Creature'. I was really passionate to portray how the Creature's denial of a partner by Victor connotes to the historical queer experience. I was privileged to have a particularly large design team as part of this project who worked alongside our rehearsal rooms to give the production a distinct aesthetic style.
Production Designer
Harriet White
The Last Words
Edinburgh Fringe Festival | Charlotte Mabel Smith | New Writing | 2022
I employed the role of co-director in this production in which we implemented a heavily devising-driven process to develop this new script alongside the writer. After a small run in Exeter, we toured this production to the Edinburgh Fringe, editing the original play into an abridged version to fit within the Fringe time-slot. This was also my first production working alongside a Disability Advisor, as the script included the portrayal of a character with Dissociative Identity Disorder. This was extremely informative in learning how to accurately portray disabled characters on-stage. This included rewriting elements of the script whilst consulting the advisor and rehearsing elements of character work alongside a DID system. As this show had a particularly extended run, we did elements of R&D in compiling audience feedback forms from initial performances, in order to inform our polished, Fringe production.
Production Designer
Harriet White
The Taming of the Shrew
Kay House | Gender-Swapped Interpretation | 2021
I set this gender-swapped production of Shakespeare's classic amidst a dystopian setting based around the premise of 'what if second-wave feminism in the 60's was so successful that the women instilled a matriarchy?'. With an entirely gender-swapped cast, I employed 60's aesthetics of power-femme and comedic gesture to give Petruchio's lines new resonance. In contrast to previous gender-swapped adaptations of the play, I altered segments of the original text to make the gendering clear. Additionally, I strove to present a matriachy which thrives off hyper-femininity, rather than swaying towards directing femme-presenting people acting hyper-masculine in order to validate their power.
The River
Roborough Studios | Jez Butterworth | 2021
This production was rehearsed and performed still amidst ever-changing Covid-19 restrictions, resulting in a blend of zoom and socially distanced rehearsals. Because of this, we opted for an in-the-round performance of Butterworth's haunting tale through nature, to an extremely intimate audience. This three-hander explored simplistic notions of love, masculinity and rural escapism. A dissonant story of an isolated man who enacts replicate love affairs in his secluded cabin. Underscored with naturalistic sound design seen to emulate the woodland setting.
One for Sorrow
Cordelia Lynn | 2020 | Pandemic Theatre
This production was rehearsed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions; a cautionary thriller exploring the insurgency of white privilege. Whilst an in-person performance wasn't possible, an abridged production of extracts from the play were performed to audience's on zoom. Despite the disappointing nature of the cancellation of an in-person viewing, the entirely online rehearsal process really challenged my approaches to texts and character building. Furthermore, I was stretched to take a more precise approach in presenting segments of the show on zoom, as the audience's perspectives became more similar to that of film. As well as this, the creative team and I facilitated a number of open discussions around the play's depiction of white privilege. In particular, we facilitated a zoom open-forum alongside the organisation "Opening Up Exeter" to talk about the play's cultural poignancy amidst an overwhelmingly white university.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Modernisation of Shakespeare | In Collaboration with "Highly Sprung" | 2019
As assistant director in this production alongside the physical theatre company 'Highly Sprung', I helped to curate a production of Midsummer infused with silliness and aesthetics inspired by a Mad-Max style dystopia. I loved creating a dissonant brand of comedy in placing a large part of my direction around curating 'the Mechanicals'. I really played with the idea that this group were a quirky bunch of amateurs with each possessing distinct anxieties or over-confidences relating to the performance. Finally, working with 'Highly Sprung' was a pleasure to collaborate in devising an ethereal style of movement for the fairies.
Olorine
Edinburgh Fringe Festival | New Writing | 2018
This was a piece of new writing that I developed alongside a fellow student, targetted to confront the queer experience in many countries where homosexuality is illegal. Set in a dystopian world, where humanity has been reinvented to no longer feel the need for romantic love, it confronted the widely held question "is love innate to human beings?" The piece was built in collaboration with the charity whereloveisillegallove.com, and we were given consent to use real testimonials from their website of queer people who faced persecution for their sexuality. This in intersection with this dystopian story was extremely moving in situating these verbatim accounts.
