In the Room with Little Eggs - Symphonie Fantastique

February 11, 2021

Little Eggs Collective are back, welcoming in 2021 with a new devised piece of musical and physical theatre: Symphonie Fantastique! I was lucky enough to sit in on their rehearsals and share with the world the joys of their devising process.

A surely unique theatre company, Little Eggs make work in an equally unique way. Devising theatre means that the creative team builds the show through improvisation, relying not on predetermined scripts or choreography. Everything that can be made up on the spot is left until that moment, and is created with a playful, open minded approach.

What makes this process tough is the amount of trust in your team that this requires. Fortunately, Little Eggs have oodles of trust.

It is not often that one gets to witness teamwork that is so effortlessly inclusive. When this team is working the room is bright and open, and creativity comes like child’s play.

Director Matthew Lee, and musical director Oliver Shermacher guide the team through a general map of where the movement should go. It was a joy to watch how this team of diversely skilled artists are able to devise intuitively fantastic rhythms of tension and release. It was like the group can sense when drama must build and build, and when they should land.

What this looks like for an unknown observer is a group of playful makers shouting ‘Oh! And then let’s do this…”, building layers of action until the scene has gotten where it needs to be. This makes for a dynamic series of images that fold on top of and into one another with all the whimsy that we’d expect when seeing a Little Eggs show. The best part about watching them work is how natural it all seems.

In anticipating Symphonie Fantastique, one word I will give to it is dynamic. This show is surely going to be an excitement of many varieties. There are high highs and oozy cools, then, more than ever before, low lows and shades of darkness. When I didn’t understand what scene they were working on, I could tell by their sensibility how it was going to play out. There’s a bag and a half full of different moods hauled into this new work.

If you’re wondering what all this will amount to, then you’ll have to come along with me and see Symphonie Fantastique, playing at KXT from February 17th - 27th.

Get your exclusive Playwave discount and book your tickets here!