The Theatre Times

Okay, it’s a very familiar problem: how do you create drama out of an artist’s life? Most great artists — writers, painters or composers — spend most of their time, practically and mentally, doing their work. And in most cases this is impossible to stage; much of the process is internal, and the result is more interesting than the creative labour. So you’re left with biograph...

“What if?” is a really provocative question. What if Greek tragedy is really about mental illness? What if Clytemnestra’s killing of her husband Agamemnon is not vengeance, but psychosis? What if her daughter Electra is terminally depressed? What if Electra’s sister Chrysothemis is on the spectrum? Then what if you read Sophocles’s Electra (circa 420–414BCE) through ...

Romeo Castelucci – primarily renowned for the singularity of his aesthetic vision developed over the last four decades – is not usually described as a political theatre-maker. Even when in 2017 he made Democracy in America, inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century ethnographic study of the same title, Castelucci insisted it was 

Theater Poetenpack was founded in 1998 by Andreas Hueck, who has continued as its artistic manager to this day. The theatre is part of the scene of privately owned, independent or free theatres in Germany, as compared with the theatres owned by a combination of public funders, such as the federal state (Landestheater), municipality (Stadttheater) and central state (Staatsthea...

I started my Edinburgh Fringe 2026 lying down. On a white bunk bed – a middle height one of a triple set – at a far end of what looked like a long and narrow rugged steel portacabin. It was the first few days of the festival with most acts still in preview, so the only shows I could get into were Darkfield’s audio theatre installations. This turned out to be an apt beginning ...