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Kneehigh Theatre Company

Kneehigh Theatre Company

Dr David Bullen, Lecturer in Drama and Theatre

  • Kneehigh’s 2004-2005 production of The Bacchae, which adapts an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, is less well known than other productions but it demonstrates some of the qualities of Kneehigh’s work as a company.
  • The production appeared around the time Kneehigh were developing a big national name for themselves. It was directed by Emma Rice, who was artistic director for a further ten years.
  • Kneehigh’s production made use of a chorus who took on a storytelling function. But they did this in ways that established a playful, mischievous mood – this brought out a key dynamic of the story. Later, the emphasis on chorus allowed the company to rapidly shift the mood to one of utmost horror – and again, this emphasised another key aspect of the story they were adapting.
  • Kneehigh’s process treated stories – even and especially ‘classics’ – less as fixed texts and more like oral culture, and therefore open to re-working for the present without a concern for so-called authenticity. This allowed them to avoid talking down to the audience; instead they constructed an experience based in shared understanding between the makers and the audience watching.
  • The process also emphasised the agency of everyone making the work – not just a director or writer. Members of the company reflected on what the story means to them and what associations it generated – this fed into the process of staging the story, more like a devising process than staging a text in a conventional way.
  • This shared ownership allowed Kneehigh to see in the story what many previous theatre makers had not – whereas many have understood The Bacchae to be about two male rivals clashing, Kneehigh drew attention to the experiences and desires of women in the story, to the extent they even added a new female character. This exemplifies Kneehigh’s approach: by working collectively, both on stage and off, they find new ways to connect with old stories.
  • Think about how you might approach the staging of a play less as putting the text on its feet and more as telling the story. Can all members of the company – performers and production team – tell the story, clearly and in their own words? What happens when the story is told in different voices – do different people emphasise different aspects? What might that tell you about what the stories mean to you in the present – and potentially to your audience?
  • Chorality and ensemble are crucial to much of Kneehigh’s work. Your story might have a chorus already written in, one might be implied, or you might have to invent one. In any case, rather than imagining the play as being just the characters, explore a collective way of telling the story, with members of the ensemble taking on the characters when necessary. How does this change the way you create the performance?
  • Consider what you need to know in order to stage the play or story you want to work with – what kinds of context do you need (historical, geographical, cultural and so on)? If you need to know this, perhaps your audience will too. How can you make your performance in a way that playfully shares the necessary knowledge with the audience so that everyone can engage with the story equally?
  • Kneehigh have influenced a lot of theatre makers but folded as a company in 2021. Perhaps the best way to still get a sense of Kneehigh’s approach to theatre making is in the ongoing work of Emma Rice. Rice left Kneehigh to briefly become artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe and subsequently founded a new company, Wise Children.
  • Wise Children recently produced an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. Their first production – from which they took their name – was an adaptation of Angela Carter’s novel Wise Children. Both productions were recorded and demonstrate an ongoing Kneehigh spirit to making theatre.
  • Emma Rice’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night – both have recordings available on platforms Drama Online and Globe Player – also demonstrate that familiar Kneehigh spirit, particularly in their playful approach to staging Shakespeare.
  • Heather Lilley’s chapter ‘Kneehigh’s Retellings’ in Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre (ed. Kara Reilly, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) expands in much greater detail on what’s discussed in this video.
  • Duška Radosavljevic writes about Kneehigh in British Theatre Companies: 1995-2014 (ed. Liz Tomlin, Methuen, 2015, available on Drama Online).
  • Alan Kent writes about Kneehigh as Cornish theatre in The Theatre of Cornwall (Westcliff Books, 2010).
  • Catherine Trenchfield’s The Global and Local Appeal of Kneehigh Theatre: Brand Kneehigh (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022) offers a very helpful overview of Kneehigh’s development and approach to making theatre.

Related topics

Drama, Theatre and Dance

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