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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 rehearsal process of Planter's Island in 2014. In this second post of three, we remember the team that brought this weird world to life, and the ideas underpinning the show. In our follow-up post, we will reflect on some of the techniques and experiences of rehearsal which still inform our work today.


The production wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible team who brought it to life. Actors Jamie Harding, Eleanor McLoughlin and Ben Alderton with designer Vivian Lu created a world that feels alive to this day. Staging this play opened a new theatre space for us where the impossible becomes possible, where dreams take shape, and where we can explore the deepest parts of ourselves.

Eleanor McLoughlin, Jamie Harding, Ben Alderton
Eleanor McLoughlin, Jamie Harding, Ben Alderton

At the time we made it, we described Planter’s Island as a “murder-mystery-cannibal-thriller-dream-play.” Eleven years later, it’s hard to come up with a more accurate description. That’s exactly what it was. Its influence on our work, though, made it so much more. Back in 2014, we were just a bunch of drama kids, letting loose, trying to figure out what kind of story we wanted to tell, and we hit on something that was meaningful, in its own small way. It was the first ‘Fragen’ work we made, focusing on an exploration of dream logic, imagination ruling over reality, where all correlation between cause and effect broke down completely.

 

'Planter's Island' was a Noir-inspired thriller about a detective who sets off to a mysterious island to solve the potential murder of a journalist who disappeared there while uncovering an appalling, grisly crime. Or at least, that's what he thinks he's doing. Perhaps he is lying in his bath at home, going on an internal journey into the dark night of his soul. Either way, he's put through hell, and he may have to lose his mind in order to save it.


Written and produced as Roland’s final graduation piece at Drama Centre London, it was staged at the Platform Theatre with support from Lorne Campbell, Shona Morris, and Diana Fraser. The play leaned heavily into the idea of structuring a narrative around dream logic, not unlike the existential landscapes of Strindberg’s A Dream Play, but twisted, grittier, darker, messier. It was a Noir-inflected dive into the fragmented psyche of a broken-down detective named Plotter.


“The play was built inside Plotter’s mind,” is how Roland remembers it. “It was a filthy, unpredictable world inspired by personal hallucinations, where a bathtub became a boat, and a dead woman obstructed her own murder investigation. The tropey, cliché dialogue mirrored this chaos, blending the snappy rhythm of 1940s Noir with unsettling modern language. The result was a surreal journey inspired by Lars von Trier, Chaos Theory, and the Noir movies of John Huston, Fritz Lang, Carol Reed and many more, every scene breaking off a new piece of Plotter’s fractured inner reality.”

 

Writing Planter’s Island was a process of embracing chaos, inspired by William Demastes’ book, Theatre of Chaos. Demastes argues that chaos in theatre reflects the unpredictability of life itself, allowing stories to emerge organically from fragmentation. Taking this principle and applying it to dramatic situations opened up many surreal opportunities. The characters in Planter’s Island existed in two states at once, whether alive but dead, grounded yet surreal, wide awake and dreaming. The murdered journalist, for instance, was both the key to solving the story and the reason the mystery could never be resolved, a paradox that added layers to her contradictory actions. This approach allowed us to create a world that felt as unpredictable as a dream, composed of strange fractal inner geometries, inviting the audience to trace their own interpretations as though they were watching their own nightmares unfold onstage.

 

Jamie Harding played Plotter, the PI driven by deep paranoia and angst, with such biting humour and elastic physicality. It was a tough role to hold the entire piece together like he did.. Playing a lost soul caught between grief and manic laughter was hard to do without coming across as insincere or over-the-top, and he toed that line perfectly. Eleanor McLoughlin committed a wiry tension to her dual roles as femme fatale and Plotter’s ex-wife, manipulating the action always out of Plotter's reach with her inimitable grace and precision. And Ben Alderton, our regular collaborator and one of our closest partners, played the ever-morphing Cannibal Child, a creation of Plotter’s embattled subconscious sent to unsettle and destroy him. Ben managed somehow to embody this grotesque dream figure and his parade of vivid, unsettling sub-personalities. Each performance pushed the boundaries of what we imagined possible, making the chaotic world of the play come alive.

 

Vivian Lu’s design work was transformative, a simple and disgusting playground that let our imaginations run riot. It was the glue that bound everything together, and showed us how simple, symbolic objects could be used to economically strike to the heart of the underlying narrative mechanics. She created a tactile, monochrome world that felt like it was pulled directly from Plotter’s subconscious. Street lamps sourced from Camden Council emitted a pristine sodium yellow glow which imitated in real life black and yellow the monochrome of those classic Noir pictures. Her design was the silent character of the piece, integral to its meaning, turning the stage into a distorted reflection of Plotter’s inner chaos.

Vivian Lu design maquette
Vivian Lu design maquette

 Rehearsals for Planter’s Island were as chaotic and unpredictable as the play itself, maybe worth their own article to describe. We used all kinds of structured play, Meisner techniques, and the occasional burst of improvisation to find the characters’ realities. There were limitations, with tight budgets, restricted rehearsal spaces (including a shower room at one point!), and discarded ideas, but those constraints sparked the team’s creativity. The actors had to trust the process, even when it didn’t make sense. As we will explore in our final post about 'Planter's', rehearsals were no direct line to a foregone conclusion but rather an elaborate chase of intangible ideas. We would rehearse a scene that felt like nonsense, only to see it transformed under the lights. It wasn’t until we were in front of an audience that the pieces fell into place. Their reactions revealed connections we hadn’t seen before.

 

This process, though challenging, was transformative. It gave birth to what Roland describes as the “Fragen approach” to theatre, a methodology grounded in uncertainty and exploration, where the audience becomes an active participant. Easy logic and narrative coherence is withheld from the audience so that they end up having to piece together meaning from the fragments. The play, therefore, is rewritten in the mind of everyone who watches it, since everyone fills in the gaps in their own distinct way. Thus the play becomes about YOU, the spectator, and your fantasy as much as it is about characters and ideas. Watching audiences respond to Planter’s Island was an experience in itself. Some traced their own memories in the dream-like structure, connecting with it on a personal level. Others were drawn to the paradoxes of characters who seemed to exist in two states at once, embodying contradictions that mirrored life’s uncertainties.

 

Eleven years later, Planter’s Island remains a pivotal moment for us, both as a theatrical experiment and as an artistic milestone. It taught us to embrace chaos, to trust the collaborative process, and to see theatre not just as storytelling but as an exploration of the unknown. It’s a play that, much like the dreams it sought to emulate, continues to grow and change in the memories of those who experienced it.


22.01.25



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© 2014 by Fragen Theatre Company

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