X at Sue Townsend Theatre

Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting. Waiting. Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them. To lose all sense of it. To start seeing things in the dark outside.

As a director, I’m often guilty of over-analysing and intellectualising a text. Peeling back the layers of a character and exploring humanity through psychoanalysis is a vital stage, and one that I love, but my recent production of X by Alistair McDowall has truly reminded me of the importance of coming out of the head and into the body. This is a sci-fi horror set in space with all the impossible complexities of the cosmos, but underneath, X is primal, raw and intrinsically human.

Siera Taylor – photography by Abby Swain

It’s been an incredible process that has pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to throw out the rulebook in search of a new way to tackle the mind-bending text. The final production was one I’m extremely proud of, led by a spectacular cast who threw everything into it and electrified Sue Townsend Theatre with their powerful performances.

Since the production closed, we’re delighted to have signed lead actor Siera Taylor (pictured in the X poster and production photography above) to our UYA Talent Agency and she’s already been filming a commercial this week for Sony.

Louise Kavanagh – photography by Abby Swain