Greeks and the fall of civilisations in two shows at Bridewell Theatre

Rose Bruford College are presenting two responses to Greek theatre, the final shows from their MA and MFA actors before they embark on their professional careers. After the Fall is a promenade performance inspired by Euripides’ plays depicting the aftermath of Troy, created and performed by the actors with director Sarah Dowling, and The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, the English language premiere of the play by Martin Crimp is directed by Ivan V Talijančić. We spoke to them both.

Sarah, how does the promenade format of After the Fall change the experience for an audience compared to watching a play from a traditional theatre seat?

We will invite the audience to follow one of the 12 actors to scenes which will be spread over the footprint of the entire backstage, seating bank, and ‘stage’ of the Bridewell Theatre. All of these spaces are within the designed world of the purgatorial space where we find our fallen Trojan women and Greek royalty. However, the audience can also choose to roam free. Without a seat to anchor them, the audience starts to become an active ingredient in the live event. How close they get to the performer and what shape they form in the space around the theatrical vignettes is an unpredictable and potentially potent experience for audience and actors alike. I hope audiences are thrilled by the proximity to the action and, ultimately, I want them to feel a strong connection to the characters despite a fragmented, non-linear narrative.

**The show is inspired by ancient Greek tragedies but was created entirely by the company. What was the collaborative process like working with these graduating actors to build the story from scratch? ** The MA students I’m working with at Bruford are an international group with a wealth of lived experience. We worked initially with Coleridge translations of the Ancient Greek texts and began seeking what we could find vital for 2026 in these ‘old’ stories. The articulation of the female experience of war that Euripides chose to focus on became an essential aspect. The second driving force came out of reading across three ‘nations’: Hecuba, Helen, Iphigenia—Trojans, Spartans, Greeks—all of them experience huge loss. Kings, queens, royalty, slaves all meet similar fates. This levelling of people that happens in these tragedies became important to explore in our current climate where divisions and sides have become paramount—we became interested in what would happen if they met and saw each other. And so we came to see our characters in the Asphodel Fields—Ancient Greece’s version of purgatory. A place where people—no matter their rank/wealth—all go when they die to wander endlessly until all old enmities and passions slowly slip away, leaving what? The question of how hard it is for them to let go of who they were and what they are left with is the stuff of After the Fall.

Given your extensive background with Punchdrunk, what elements of immersive storytelling can audiences expect to experience during the performance?

Fragmented, non-linear storytelling. Architecture, design, lighting, and sound that surround the audience. The audience can find themselves in the middle of these elements rather than observing them from a distance. Choreography and physical storytelling alongside text. Each night there are a handful of exclusive scenes for one audience member only.

Ivan, as both the director of The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema and the course leader for these master's programs, how does a boundary-pushing production like this prepare these actors for the professional industry they are about to enter?

In the master's acting course I lead at Rose Bruford College, I endeavor to expose the students to a multitude of approaches to theatre-making throughout the year, both traditional and contemporary, to give them the edge of versatility that I believe is essential in order for a 21st-century performer to develop a sustainable practice in our ever-expanding industry. A part of this training is also to prepare the actors to be able to work with highly idiosyncratic directorial visions; an unconventional project such as this one will enable them to expand and enhance their practice even further.

This production is the English language premiere of Martin Crimp’s play. What makes his contemporary spin on the classic Oedipus myth feel so relevant for audiences today?

In The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, Martin Crimp conjures a poetic landscape in which the boundaries between antiquity and modernity are blurred. This makes the material accessible to contemporary audiences, while at the same time honoring the ancient source material, and in doing so inviting the audiences to draw parallels between the past and the present. One of the elements of Martin's writing that I have always appreciated is his gift for negotiating in subtleties of language and intentional ambiguities of meaning, which I believe encourages the audiences to interpret the play on a personal level and allows them to draw their own conclusions.

This play deals with heavy themes like civil war and its lingering aftermath. What do you hope the audience takes away or reflects on after seeing the cycle of conflict play out?

Ancient Greeks firmly believed in the power of theatre to educate—by depicting some of the worst horrors that humans are capable of, these plays were meant to act as cautionary tales; by reliving tragedy in a shared fictional arena, the hope was that the spectators would learn to avoid it in real life. Unfortunately, history teaches us that the lessons learned from past mistakes have a limited shelf life, and peace is only ever a temporary state. Martin Crimp's play zeroes in on the cyclical nature of wars and a sort of collective amnesia that settles in in their wake, which leads humanity to repeat the errors of the past.

Both shows playThe Bridewell Theatre. After the Fall 18 – 20 June