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Susie
MacDonald

Freelance Theatre Director

Recent 
Projects

A Quest for Rest

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Interactive/immersive/participatory ~ Mushmoss Collective ~ game

~ Audience collaboratively devise/create ~ Overhead Projector ~

Audience play an avatar ~ exploring Energy Limiting Chronic Illness

~ Theatre Deli's 'The Social Model...&More' Festival

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A Midsummer Night's Dream...(sort of)

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New Musical ~ Adaptation ~

Young People/ School ~

Large Cast ~ Original Songs

A new Musical inspired by the classic Shakespeare tale.

Four lovers, a pair of Pucks and a troupe of scouts walk into a forest…

Colossal

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Award Winning ~ Edinburgh Fringe ~ Soho Theatre ~ International Tour ~ One Man Show ~ New Writing ~ Original Songs

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you wake up / octopus

Interactive ~ Immersive ~ Co-Creation ~ Installation ~ Experimental ~ Collaborative ~ Mushmoss Collective

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An immersive audio-visual, branching narrative created by you: a newly awakened octopus on a journey to the centre of the earth /or/ distant space to find your missing mother.

 

you wake up / octopus is an ethereal and moving exploration of identity, gender, loss and (re)discovery performed in collaboration with its audience.

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A new play by ariella como stoian exploring the unrealities of magical, corrosive grief and loss through a queer lens.
 

 

"With a compassionate and delicately woven script from Ariella Como Stoian, seamless and nuanced directing from Susie MacDonald and shining atmospheric design from Zygmund de Somogyi this is a captivating and endlessly surprising production that should be seen by all. It's one thing to portray grief on stage, but to articulate it so finely and powerfully is a testament to their powers of storytelling."
 

Matthew Jameson, Deputy Director at The Space Theatre

To be a bat

London Horror Festival, The Space, October 2021

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Original Shakespearean text re-imagined in a modern day festival setting : live music, rave parties and drunken shenanigans.
 

A cast of over 30 students aged 13 – 17.
Live band, dancing, and gig theatre.

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Twelfth Night

King Edward’s School Witley, November 2021

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Finding Percy Erebus

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An allegorical journey of an 8-year-old child after the death of their best friend, Percy, featuring clowning, puppetry, original music and magic.

 

We developed Finding Percy Erebus over several months working with various specialists including a child psychologist and a magic consultant. The play received 5 star reviews and we hope to tour it in the coming year.

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Arts Council England Funded Research and Development created by Elephant Talk Theatre, in partnership with Applecart Arts and the charity Child Bereavement UK, 2021

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“The beautifully interspersed moments of humour and playfulness remind us that there can be joy and hope even in the darkest of times”

★★★★★Theatre Weekly

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The Emoji Project is an intergenerational, participatory anthology of new writing responding to emojis as an ever-evolving, nuanced language. 
 

A collaboration between 10 playwrights, 3 directors and a cast of 8 actors.

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The Emoji Project

The Hen & Chicken’s Theatre, August 2021

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Your Unfortunate Servants

The National Archives, July 2021


 

A radio play written in residence at The National Archives in collaboration with In Their Own Write: a research team funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Inspired by letters detailing the plight of Welsh paupers in a Victorian Workhouse under the New Poor Law.

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Created in a lockdown, we rehearsed and recorded remotely.

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