Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Summer Festival

Deposit by Matt Hartley

Director Amy Iles
Designer Katie Evans
Cast: Sunny Chung, Kieran Devine, Oscar Gough, Molly Watton Williams

"We've become savages, trampling over each other for a tiny bit of grass!"

Rachel and Ben want to buy their own place; as do their friends, Melanie and Sam. But with rising rental costs, cost-of-living crises and stagnant pay structures, saving for a deposit seems impossible. The solution? Sharing a one-bed flat between the four of them. But with
paper thin walls and space growing sparser by the day, which will they sacrifice first – the friendship, the relationship or the dream of buying their own property? 

An all-too relatable black comedy about 'Generation Rent' and lengths they will go to to get that first step on the property ladder.

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again by Alice Birch

Director Ella Strauss
Designer Lillyanna Bryan
Cast: Emaan Durrani, Sam Grove, Emily Hurst, Spike Maxwell

“Act appropriately. Don't break the rules. Just behave.”

Spoiler alert: This play does none of the above. Alice Birch exposes and obliterates the scripts we’re told to follow in this George Devine award-winning play, described by the Daily Telegraph as "a cluster-bomb of subversion". Revolt is a series of intimate, sharp and darkly funny vignettes where language, behaviour and power collide, grieving the inherited violence that shapes womanhood.  

Splendour by Abi Morgan

Director Imogen Lilley
Designer Ryan Webster
Cast: Sasha McCabe, Lili Mohammad, Tesni Richards, Maiya Louise Thapar

“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

Director Julie Shelton
Designer Finn O’Grady
Cast: Ellie Spooner, George Usher

“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.