Director and writer Laura Lindow has collaborated with Cap-a-Pie on a number of productions, including Woven Bones (2018) and Marvellous Microbes (2024). To mark the company’s 30th year, she reflects on the projects they’ve made together and what makes Cap-a-Pie’s approach distinctive.
“I am delighted to join in sounding party trumpets for the brilliant Cap-a-Pie’s 30th year. It is heartening that such a great, inventive and unassuming company endures, its work and ambition, impact and reach never more essential.
I hold great pride in all the projects I’ve been fortunate to work with Katy and Brad on. And I still open every new email thread with excited anticipation of what new creative adventure might be afoot. What world views, scientific mysteries or profound injustices we might explore, and who they might be bringing with them for the task at hand. Their project journeys are tenacious and full, and their abilities to connect, unafraid and innovative, linking fascinating and important subject matters with just the right team (who knew there was an authority in magic?!)
The Important Man residential was when I first met Katy and Brad, and I laughed from start to end of our time together, from plan to van to the titular man. The project was both twinkly eyed and majestic, a common feature of their Cap-a-Pie way. Good-humoured and buoyant but never trivialising or slap-dash, and I was so proud of the results with that one-man full-ensembled, magic-hearted show.
As a team they are second to none. Katy in her resourcefulness. In her integrity and generous imagination. Brad in his curiosity, creativity and theatrical talent. We are more fortunate as a region to have them than I think many know.
For me then came Woven Bones. Again, a subject matter that makes you sit up and listen. Thanks to the company’s careful architecture and skilled delivery, academia and theatre intertwined in this project, and I felt cleverer than I ever should, and I’d wager, the academics felt more playful in a project than they suspected they would.
The work for Credit around our broken benefits system spanned very dark years. Over Covid pre, during and post, and then the bare and desperate aftermath. Katy and Brad kept their mojo. Kept us all linked. Didn’t give up on the principles. On the piece. We visited helpless-feeling Citizens Advice advisors on headsets over screens in dark spare rooms. Shared curry and fury in real space with forgotten-feeling claimants. Such care was taken over every beat and interaction. We are all valued as stakeholders in a Cap-a-Pie project, whether participant, audience, advisor or creative, and the team match us in their sensitive, collaborative approach. For me, Credit gave back and packed a resounding and much needed punch.
Creative work has never been more necessary. How else can we unite in our individuality?!
I love the way Cap-a-Pie hold great and serious topics up to the light using theatre and creative engagement and ask for everyone’s eyes on. Calling on young minds and voices to invest, debate and imagine. This is the way our world’s future paths will emerge, with young people holding science, history and politics not as revered specialisms but rather as tools in their hands to forge new ways ahead.
They are, simply put, ‘great company’ in every sense of the words. From end to end, from head to toe. Cap-a-Pie. Katy and Brad. Always listening. Always offering. Seriously playful. Collaborative and create-full. And just a pleasure to journey with.
Here’s to you my fine friends. Long may you play on!”
Photos (top to bottom): Woven Bones, The Important Man, Credit rehearsal photo and artwork.
