Interview with Dadiow Lin

In this interview, I had the great pleasure of doing an interview with director Dadiow Lin about the upcoming production ‘After Miss Julie'. She has shared insights into what audiences can expect from this show, as well as the inspiration and hard work

behind bringing this show to life.

After Miss Julie has been revived many times since Patrick Marber’s adaptation — what made you want to return to this story now, in 2025?

One of the most moving things in AFTER MISS JULIE is that sense of hope, and the tragedy when the hope is crushed in front of us. Marber's play exposes people at their rawest: the desire and longing are so naked and intense as the characters endeavour to create a connection that can never be truly built. In 2025, when hope and fear often sit side-by-side in the cultural psyche, the play speaks with an urgency I find impossible to ignore. 

The play is set on the eve of Labour’s 1945 victory. How does that political moment shape the atmosphere and tension within your production?

The night of 26 July 1945 was a moment when the ground was shifting under everyone's feet. A new world is coming, one that threatens the old hierarchies but does not yet promise stability or safety. That tension saturates the room. The landslide victory of the Labour Party gives us a chance to start the play, on an estate owned by a Labour peer, with an absolutely exciting and jolly mood, but that feeling soon shifts when we see Miss Julie, the daughter of this wealthy Labour peer, appearing in the servants' quarter and hanging out with the working people. The contrast and tension is dramatic and consistent throughout the play. 

You’ve described After Miss Julie as “heartbreakingly human and devastatingly now.” What aspects of today’s world do you see reflected most powerfully in it?

The emotional volatility this play captures feels present today. Julie, John, and Christinie each carry their own loneliness and unmet desire, and they reach for connection in ways that can be tender one moment and destructive the next. That paradox, wanting to be loved and yet sabotaging the very thing you seek, feels incredibly relevant. 

The entire story unfolds within a single kitchen — how are you approaching using that confined space to heighten intensity and intimacy?

A confined space is actually to our benefit - as an audience memeber, you'd naturally be more focused on the interaction amongst the people on stage without much distraction. Strindberg mentioned the idea of 'impressionism' in his MISS JULIE preface when describing the set in this kitchen; what we want to do is to paint a picture of emotions, desire, longing, and desperation for an audience to reflect to our human society as a whole. 

Was there a particular moment in rehearsals so far that surprised you — when a scene suddenly revealed something new or unexpected?

We have not started rehearsals yet; it will be in mid January.  

The design team — Eleanor Wintour on set, Jack Hathaway on lighting and Ed Lewis on sound — plays a key role in building the world. How are you collaborating to create the production’s tone and texture?

We communicate with each other to ensure that we are loyal to the naturalism that is embedded in this play, and work to bring the poetic sense from something that is set out to feel real.  

Do you see your interpretation as a conversation with Strindberg’s original, or something that stands deliberately apart from it?

It is a conversation, but one where I am listening more to Marber than to Strindberg. Marber honours the core impulses of Strindberg's story and structure while stripping away the misogyny and determinism that no longer serve us. My job is to meet Marber's version on its own terms and communicate it with our audience with a sharp, painful, and compassionate look at the three people on the edge. 

You’ve said that hope can be both our greatest strength and our deepest wound. How did that idea shape your approach to directing this piece?

Each character in this play clings to an idea of a better life. Hope is what drives them forward, but it also hurts themselves as well as others, and we look at the intensity of the hope/desire/objectives and bring both excitement into the space when it's formed and see the hope crushes one's soul when it breaks. It is important to us that the audience doesn't judge them for what they desire, and when hope fractures, it hurts. The pain is the heart of the story, and we have leaned into the sincerity of their dreams, not just the tragedy of their collapse. 

When you think of the 1945 setting — post-war Britain, change in the air — did you find yourself drawing parallels between that moment of transition and the state of theatre today?

Indeed. 1945 is a moment when systems were reimagined, sometimes tentatively, sometimes radically. Let's not forget the NHS was invented and launched by Bevan while Attlee was the PM. Theatre today is in its own moment of reckoning. We are questioning structures, interrogating who gets to tell stories, and trying to rebuild in ways that feel more equitable and imaginative. It is both exciting and scary and AFTER MISS JULIE also captures that liminal state, where possibility and danger sit cheek-by-jowl. 

What do you most hope audiences will take away from this piece as they leave the theatre?

I hope the audience leaves with a sense of empathy for how fragile humans can be, even when their actions seem messy and cruel. I hope they recognise something of themselves in these characters' longing, their vulnerability, their bravery to expose themselves to each other, and their hunger for a life that sits just out of reach. I hope the play lingers, not as a moral lesson but as a human one. That we are complicated. That love and power can warp each other. And that sometimes the most devastating stories are the ones that feel closest to the truth. 

After Miss Julie is playing at the Park Theatre from the 11th-28th February. Full information can be found via this link: https://parktheatre.co.uk/events/after-miss-julie