The world-renowned theatrical partnership between British director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod is well-known to Bulgarian audiences through memorable presentation of their productions in Sofia, including within the World Theatre in Sofia platform, both live and online, as well as their staging of Euripides’ Medea at the National Theatre. They consistently prioritize “the search for life in the actor’s work” and have earned an international reputation for “breathing new life into the classics with energetic performances” (The Guardian).
Actors including Adrian Lester, Tom Hiddleston, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hollander, Olivia Williams, Gwendoline Christie and Matthew Macfadyen all developed their talent working with Cheek by Jowl in their early careers. Declan Donnellan has developed his approach to working with actors in two books, The Actor and the Target and The Actor and the Space, which have resonated widely among theatre practitioners, students, and theatre enthusiasts.
In the summer of 2021, their company “Cheek by Jowl” collaborated with director Sophie Fiennes, to create the first in-depth documentation of their unique working process and philosophy.
In a derelict Gothic mansion on the outskirts of London, we join eight actors – four Macbeths and four Lady Macbeths – for eleven days with Cheek by Jowl. Working in pairs, they investigate key scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy. But this film is not about the play. It’s about being offered a different position from which to view acting and theatre – of seeing text newly animated in ways more subtle, surprising, revelatory and various than even the most dedicated theatregoers might have considered possible. Within the labyrinthine remains of the building, we watch with increasing fascination as actors and spaces combine to give Shakespeare’s words seemingly infinite new lives.
The film is entirely observational. It is shot by Sophie Fiennes, who operates as a single shooter from inside the ensemble, and its narrative construction flows along the narrative lines of the play. Throughout, Donnellan’s interactions with the actors serve simultaneously as a guide for the film’s audience, using humour, insight and challenge to open our eyes to fresh possibility.
The screening will be followed by a talk with Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod.
In English with Bulgarian subtitles.
Free admission.
