INTO THE WOODS- 2018

A note from the Director - Olivia Burgin

“Directing a Sondheim as my debut was both exciting and terrifying. I bid Into The Woods because I have a history with the show and it struck me as odd that UCL hadn’t staged it before. The show follows several well-known fairytale characters as they all go into the woods in search of something they want. Their stories overlap and intertwine and only a few make it out again. The cast was bigger than average and it called for a classical band, but I like to think my production team and I rose to the challenge. The dystopian setting seemed at first to contradict the twee tone of the show, but there’s actually a lot of a dark stuff in there and the final product was really effective. Our leads were stand-out performances for the whole year of MT, and I’m really proud of the gender and experience variety in the cast. We had a lot more choreography than most interpretations of the show, since it is quite long and it was important to me to keep everyone visually engaged. Selling it to adults was easy, to students was a bit harder, but our publicity design dodged the low-budget-school-play stigma and instead tapped into what the show really is; an honest, amusing and often quite bleak look into the human psyche, with some bangers thrown in for good measure. “

Photography: Danté Kim (@dante.k.photo)