Interview with Sarah Dowling & Ivan V Talijančić

This June, Rose Bruford College presents two ambitious responses to Euripides's works as its MA and MFA Acting students prepare to enter the profession. After the Fall, directed by Punchdrunk associate Sarah Dowling, is a promenade performance inspired by Hecuba and The Trojan Women. At the same time, The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, directed by Ivan V Talijančić, marks the English-language premiere of Martin Crimp's striking adaptation of The Phoenician Women. I spoke with both directors about reimagining Greek tragedy for contemporary audiences, collaborating with emerging artists, and why these ancient stories continue to resonate today.

Both productions draw inspiration from Euripides, yet approach the material in very different ways. What first attracted each of you to these particular stories?

SD: My dad wrote a version of The Trojan Women which I performed in and toured around the castles and mansion houses of Ireland in the 90’s. The aftermath of war told purely from the perspective of women felt important then and unfortunately feels still as vital today.

IT: I am a massive fan of Martin Crimp’s writing, and as a matter of fact, another Greek adaptation he penned a while back, Cruel and Tender, is probably my favourite play in the modern canon. The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, Martin’s riff of Euripides’ Phoenician Women, came up in a conversation I had with him a couple of years ago, at Rose Bruford College, as a matter of fact. I was surprised not to have known that he’d written this back in 2013, and when I finally read the script last summer, my mind was immediately flooded with striking images. The beauty of Martin's text is that he puts antiquity and modernity on a collision course, and this explosive encounter, infused with many contemporary references, gifted me a rather potent road map for staging the play.

Greek tragedy has endured for centuries because it explored human nature. What themes within these works feel especially relevant to audiences in 2026?

IT: In antiquity, the Greek society viewed the theatre as a fictional arena in which the humankind's worst tragedies could be played out in front of the spectators, prompting them to learn from past mistakes. At the core of Martin Crimp's adaptation, leaning into the original text, of course, is a conflict between two brothers who fail to honour their agreement to share the leadership of their land, leading them to engage in a deadly conflict in which both sides are annihilated. Such conflictual dynamics have an all-too-familiar ring to them in the context of the present-day global politics, making this story relatable for the contemporary audiences.

After the Fall is a promenade production inspired by both Euripides and Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City. How has immersive storytelling shaped your approach to exploring the aftermath of war?

SD: I was a performer and resident director on The Burnt City – Punchdrunk’s reimagining of Euripides’ Hecuba and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. I have worked with the company for twenty-five years and have seen the extraordinary emotional connection this work can build between audience and performer. The shared negotiation each night of the space, the proximity of audience, the negotiation of the “rules” of engagement without seats and linear narrative form are, in my experience, deeply powerful ways of connecting to live theatre. As a result, I have tried to bring these aspects of Punchdrunk’s masked shows into play here to enhance audiences experience of the predicaments and perspectives of each of the twelve characters.

The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema marks the English-language premiere of Martin Crimp’s text. What excited you most about bringing this work to British audiences for the first time?

IT: As I mentioned earlier in our conversation, I had a strikingly visceral reaction when I first read Martin’s play, my mind was flooded with vivid imagery, it was almost overwhelming. My immediate response was: “well, the universe is telling me that I have to stage this play!” My family is from the ex-Yugoslavia, and the echoes of not-too-distant civil war and genocide which tore my former homeland apart when I was a teenager have all-too-familiar ring to them. I think this is in large part why the play resonated so deeply – it is a scathing indictment of war and it gets rather vicious, while at the same time being infused with poetry and humour. I was quite surprised to find out that it had never been performed in English neither in the UK nor elsewhere, and I am beyond grateful to Martin for trusting me to bring his stunning play to life in its original form for the first time.

Both productions focus on the consequences of conflict rather than the battles themselves.

Why do you think theatre is such a powerful medium for examining what happens after violence ends?

IT: Modern-day audiences, especially though film and television, have been inundated with images of war and destruction; and conflict is often depicted with adrenaline-pumping excitement. We have been saturated with such imagery from a young age, to the point that blood sport becomes entertainment. Showing the destructive aftermath of the war, I would offer – the unspeakable loss and the devastating effects on people and society that it leaves in its wake, is a much more potent an argument against it. Ancient Greeks had a deep understanding of this, which is why the violence was never depicted graphically on the stage, but conveyed through storytelling – allowing the audience to imagine the horrors, which affects every individual in a deeply personal way.

Sarah, audiences move through the world of After the Fall as witnesses to the stories unfolding around them. What unique opportunities does that create compared to a traditional seated production?

SD: The promenade nature means the audience gets an opportunity to see the characters when they are not delivering their “big” scenes. The experience will be like getting access to behind the curtain – they might catch a character in a more intimate moment, where they are not “performing”, just being… There will also be moments where a character will outstretch their hand and invite just a small group of viewers to hear their particular perspective.

Ivan, Martin Crimp’s writing often combines poetic language with contemporary concerns.

How have you approached balancing the text’s classical origins with its modern perspective?

IT: Very good point. It is what I love so much about Martin's writing; he has a knack for expertly manoeuvring subtleties and ambiguities of language, prompting us to lean in and engage our imagination, and in doing so, triggering a multitude of possible interpretations. Unlike any other play that I can remember, I discovered that the more I surrendered myself to the challenges of this rich material, the more it yielded compelling directorial ideas. In The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema, Martin’s writing rapidly and seamlessly cycles through the poetry and contemporary parlance, antiquity and modernity co-exist in a surreal and yet surprisingly organic way. You may see references to sacrificial ritual at a divinity’s temple and customer satisfaction surveys within the same scene. This approach infuses the play with a level of abstraction and timelessness that invites each audience member to come up with their own interpretations.

These productions are the culmination of the MA and MFA Acting students’ training. What has it been like collaborating with performers on the cusp of their professional careers?

SD: I have really enjoyed working with this international cohort with a great deal of lived experience. They have been up to this point focussing on absorbing all the incredible voice, movement, text and acting methodologies on offer as a student. They feel very ready to put all these tools into practice in this final production. After the Fall acts a great bridge into a professional career – they are directed by a working artist but still with the support of all that Bruford has to offer.

IT: My production features MA/MFA acting students I’ve been mentoring throughout this academic year, along with a chorus of undergraduate students from the college’s European Theatre Arts programme. The way in which I am approaching this production is anything but conventional, but their commitment to this project and seemingly inexhaustible imagination has made the work of this project both exciting and joyful.

Rose Bruford’s training integrates classical techniques with contemporary performance practices. How have you seen that philosophy reflected in the students’ work during rehearsals?

IT: True, the way in which the course I lead is designed is rooted in a pluralistic approach; rather than offering a sort of monolithic training that is rooted in a singular technique, the students are trained to be versatile performers / theatre-makers; over the course of the year, they have been exposed to upwards of twenty different practitioners and methodologies, and this allowed them to develop an extensive tool kit.

SD: After the Fall needs classical text training, the ability to deliver highly choreographic sequences by a fantastic deviser and collaborator, and deliver film type performance in the moments the audiences are very close to the action. The training these students received at Bruford has ensured they were able to deliver all this with aplomb.

What have the students surprised you with throughout the rehearsal process?

SD: Most of the students had never seen immersive work and despite some initial concerns about this form of theatre, I am now surprised how quickly and wholeheartedly the group has embraced the form.

IT: I would say, adding to the previous point, that the value of our approach to training was very clearly manifested itself during the rehearsal process; I find that the actors dove into the challenges of the material and the conceptual complexities with a kind of fearlessness and inquisitiveness, which is allowing them to deftly negotiate abstraction and stylized approach and render their characters in a fully embodied way.

Finally, what do you hope audiences take away from these productions after spending time with these ancient stories reimagined through a contemporary lens?

IT: Surreally, ancient and modern worlds meet in a kind of a liminal space in this work. The resulting feeling is one of timelessness; cautionary tales with unreconcilable conflicts at their core that could have easily been pulled from the evening news. It offers the audience an invitation to reflect on the destructive nature of political conflicts that continue to plague the human race to this day and the irreparable damage wars leave in their wake.

SD: I hope audiences feel like the female voice in these stories is well represented, but ultimately that all of the characters: captor and captive, male and female, make a connection with the audience and the divisions which separate them in the stories and the literal division between audience and performer dissolve to make moments of interconnectedness between us all.

After the Fall is performing at the Bridewell Theatre from 18–20 June, with performances at 7pm and selected 2pm matinees. The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema runs from 25–27 June.