DEATH AND THE CARPENTER
Written by Sonia Overall
Directed by Roanna Bond
Music by Greg Ireland
Puppets by James Frost
Toured the South East and East Anglia 2023-2025
"Death knows many tunes. A slip-jig for every slaughter, a ditty for every demise’’
Death plays the violin – perhaps you knew that? A young carpenter stumbles upon Death in the woods as he practises. The accident becomes a fatal encounter – he has seen Death but cannot die until the tune ends. In limbo, he strikes a bargain with Death. If Death can finish the song by sunset, he will claim the carpenter’s life for himself. If Death fails, the man will go free. Playing for time, the carpenter grapples with fate, free will and mortality as he gets drawn into a deadly game.
Journey into a macabre world where death has a voice you don’t want to hear. This enthralling production from Parrot Theatre Company is a striking new folk tale featuring stunning puppetry, storytelling and live music.
Death and the Carpenter (2025) trailer
Southern Maltings, Ware; Headgate Theatre, Colchester; Maltings, Ely; Wells Maltings, Wells next the Sea; Norwich Puppet Theatre; Finchingfield Guild Hall; Arden Theatre, Faversham; Sandwich Medieval Centre; Fruitworks, Canterbury; West Hampstead Arts Centre; Ark, Cliftonville; St Edmunds Chapel, Dover; Guildhall, Faversham; Westgate Towers, Canterbury; Tin Tabernacle, Hythe; Brighton Fishing Museum; Anselm Theatre, Canterbury Christ Church University; Greyfriars Garden, Canterbury; Lighthouse, Deal
MACBETH
Written by William Shakespeare
Performed at the Westgate Towers, Canterbury, 3rd - 5th November 2022
"O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife"
Macbeth, a hardened soldier, discovers there are no limits to his ambition when he encounters three witches who inform him that he could be king. Believing he is destined for power, he embarks on a tyrannical path that leads to his downfall.
In this innovative new production, we reimagine Macbeth's ascent as the horrors of PTSD and the allure of the supernatural begin to take a hold of his reality. As he takes his country to the brink, the world begins to unravel around him.
Macbeth (2022) trailer
TALK
Written by Mark Wilson
Performed at C-Cubed, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 11 - 17 August 2019
“Hell must be a heart filled with unheard stories…”
Bethlem Royal Hospital, the Criminal Wing for the Insane. 1854. Two Doctors, Charles Hood and George Haydon, are angered by the cruel, inhumane treatment of patients. They struggle to reform old fashioned attitudes with more a progressive outlook.
Care rather than restraint. Talking rather than punishment. Their relationship becomes increasingly strained as Haydon adopts a more radical approach, now known as psychotherapy. Two patients, Richard and Emily, are caught in the middle as they attempt to demonstrate their innovative theories and battle with the repressive authorities.
Talk (2019) trailer
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Emily, a bright and brilliant poet has been wrongly incarcerated by her domineering husband. Richard, a talented artist suffers from psychosis and wrestles with a history that haunts him. Both have been banished from the world. We watch their struggle to find a voice amidst the roar and clamour of madness, both from outside and within. Will Talking ease their troubled minds or crack them completely?
In a time blighted by NHS cuts to mental health care, Talk is at once a scathing rebuke of treatment of the mentally ill in the past, and a moving and thought-provoking story about how we inter-relate and connect with one another in the present.