'Please don’t do that. Address anything difficult to a stuffed animal.’

Forty years ago, Bluebell Studios was the heartbeat to a nation’s childhood, the home-workshop where Bernard painstakingly animated the inanimate, bringing iconic children’s television to life, frame by careful frame. His wife Annie sewed the costumes – waistcoats for badgers, a hat for Mirabel the tortoise – while their daughter May played out in the sunshine.

Or maybe that’s just how Bernard remembers it.

These days, the workshop is a mausoleum to his career in make-believe. In the rafters, a homespun puppet slumps in enforced hibernation. Shelves are stuffed with armatures, old scripts, boxes, dusty books, models. Bernard’s alone, his life in aspic – but soon, the past will have to be unpacked. Because May is all grown up, and she has questions.

A reckoning is coming.

Former Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the National Theatre, Rufus Norris directs RSC Writer-in-Residence Stewart Pringle’s acutely observed, poignant new family drama in The Other Place. A homage to the craft of stop-motion film-making and an exploration of the corrosive power of nostalgia, with animation by award-winning stop-motion animator Astrid Goldsmith, Brock’s Mill investigates the ownership of memory and the importance of being present.

For more information on the themes and content of the play please visit our content advisory page. 

CREATIVES

Director Rufus Norris | Set and Costume Designer Katrina Lindsay | Projection Designer Jon Driscoll | Stop-Motion Animation Astrid Goldsmith

New Work at the RSC is generously supported by Hawthornden Foundation and The Drue and H.J. Heinz II Charitable Trust