

Are you an artist when you're not ART-ing?
We were struck recently by a post on social media from a brilliant performer, endlessly creative, filled with ideas. But now she has a...
Apr 10


Stigma, silence, shame
In 2015, we began working on what would become 5 out of 10 Men, a show that emerged from a year-long exploration of male suicide,...
Apr 4


Spring in the City is a Prison Riot
Who needs theatre and art galleries when it's spring in the city? The streets are bursting with drama. Colour is all around is, if we can...
Mar 30


Ensemble
There are an infinite number of ways of making theatre - solos, big casts, small casts, huge cast, star vehicles, text vehicles, tech...
Mar 27


Passion Fatigue
The critics say it's bad art. But does it matter what they say? Legendary Scottish-Italian artist Jack Vettriano died this week aged 73....
Mar 6


Foot through the door
We produced Blush of Dogs 10 years ago this year. In our last post about our journey, we remembered the process of leaving drama school,...
Feb 19


"I'll send you a love letter"
Every love story is the same. Every love story is unique. Artists have explored this most intangible of relations between human beings...
Feb 14


When the world is your oyster
Leaving drama school, like leaving university, is a step into the unknown. One moment, life is relentless. Then, suddenly, it’s over. No...
Feb 9


A Demon inside us all
Regular horror films immerse us in exaggerated violence and terrifying supernatural encounters that actually protect us from the real...
Feb 5


The Chaos, The Craft, The Impact
We've written in previous blogposts about how Planter's was written, and about how Fragen ideas emerged during that process. In this...
Jan 31


Trauma and Triumph
We watched Nyad the other day, a fine biopic of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad who swam an astonishing 110 miles from Cuba to Florida...
Jan 27


Towards a Theatre of Chaos
We’ve been going back through our archives, looking at old pictures, sifting through notes, recollecting various experiences from the...
Jan 22


In Praise of Black Coffee
We’ve been rewatching Twin Peaks recently, over the last few weeks. We watched David Lynch: Art Life for the first time just the other...
Jan 17


The First Questions
In 2014, Planter’s Island marked the birth of the Fragen approach to theatre: a philosophy rooted in curiosity, self-examination, and the...
Jan 15


An Art that Never Sleeps
Muholi V by Zanele Muholi, Tate Modern, 2024 Empedocles said that, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference...
Dec 26, 2024


A Night at the Orange Tree Theatre
“All you need for theatre,” Peter Brook wrote in The Empty Space, “is someone crossing an empty space while someone else watches.” That...
Dec 5, 2024


We're back. But where have we been?
Since 2019, Fragen Network has been on hiatus. That year, Paul Reynolds, the father of our Artistic Director Roland, became terminally...
Nov 30, 2024