Brock's Mill description
Brock's Mill is a new family drama by Stewart Pringle, set in the workshop of a stop-motion animator whose past is about to be unpacked.
Forty years ago, Bluebell Studios was where Bernard brought children's television to life frame by frame, while his wife Annie sewed the costumes for his puppets and their daughter May played outside. Today the workshop is a mausoleum to his career in make-believe, its shelves crammed with armatures, old scripts and models, and Bernard lives there alone. But May has grown up, and she has questions about the past as he remembers it.
A Royal Shakespeare Company production, the play premieres in The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon before coming to the Lyric Hammersmith, where it is presented in association with the Lyric and receives its London premiere. It is a homage to the craft of stop-motion film-making and an exploration of the corrosive power of nostalgia, looking at who owns a memory and the importance of being present. The production features stop-motion animation by award-winning animator Astrid Goldsmith, who is also its puppetry director.
The play is written by Stewart Pringle, the RSC's Writer-in-Residence, and directed by Rufus Norris, artistic director and chief executive of the National Theatre from 2015 to 2025, in his first London production since leaving the National. Norris's work includes Festen, for which he won an Evening Standard Award, the musical London Road at the National Theatre and the West End production of Cabaret. Set and costume design is by Katrina Lindsay and projection design by Jon Driscoll.
Book tickets for a new play about memory, family and the make-believe world of stop-motion animation.
