Splendour/This Is Living

EIGHT PLAYS/FOUR WEEKS/ONE VENUE: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School heads to the Weston Studio for an exciting 19^th Summer Festival season. Join us for a celebration of collaboration and creativity, which sees our graduating directors and designers taking the artistic reins across four double bills.

From dystopian farms and clinical drug trials, to absurdist friendships and revolutionary politics, we’re presenting a smorgasbord of contemporary brilliance. Can’t choose which double bill to see? Treat yourself to a festival ticket and see all eight plays for just £40!

Splendour by Abi Morgan
Directed by Imogen Lilley
Designed by Ryan Webster

“Tell her outside of history she is nothing… A parasite… I am history… I know what I leave behind.”

Inside an opulent drawing room of a Presidential Palace, four women are waiting on a dictator. Kathryn, a photojournalist here to take his portrait, Micheleine, the dictator’s wife, her best friend Genevieve, and Gilma, a kleptomaniac interpreter. As the minutes tick by and a revolution seizes the city outside, the women must turn to each other whilst everything else falls apart.

This Is Living by Liam Borrett
Directed by Julie Shelton
Designed by Finn O’Grady

“Well it can’t have been me, can it?”

Alice and Michael met six years ago. Three years later their daughter Lily was born. Now, in a meadow, just past midnight, they’re having an argument – Alice is cold and tired, and Michael won’t stop telling her that she died twelve hours ago. Liam Borrett’s debut is a poignant, honest story that “finds humour in unexpected places” (The Reviews Hub), exploring love, loss and what it really means to say goodbye.