Kitchen sink drama meets post-apocalyptic horror in The Hunger, the first play from female-led company Black Bright Theatre.
Set on a remote farm in the Yorkshire Dales, the story follows a mother, Deborah, and her 15-year-old daughter, Meghan, trying to protect themselves from the dangerous, disease-riddled world outside.
Company founders Helen Denning and Madeleine Farnhill were keen to stage work that championed female voices and reframed female characters as something other than the victim.
Having met while studying together at Sheffield University, the two are also keen to produce work with other female-identifying, Yorkshire-based creatives.
Ahead of The Hunger coming to Greenwich Theatre, we spoke to Black Bright’s company manager and producer Helen Denning to find out more…
Firstly, can you tell me a bit about your work as Black Bright Theatre? Who’s behind it and what made you focus on creating dark, female-led stories?
Helen Fullerton (Deborah) in The Hunger
Black Bright Theatre Company emerged from a shared vision of creating narrative-driven theatre with complex female characters at its core.
I am the company’s producer and manager, while Madeleine Farnhill is our artistic director and writer.
We met at Sheffield University Theatre Company and we haven’t looked back since.
During the March 2020 lockdown we talked about producing a play that Maddie was writing, the result of which was The Hunger.
Why did you call yourselves ‘Black Bright Theatre’?
‘Black Bright’ is a Yorkshire phrase meaning filthy or very dirty. Maddie’s mum often uses it to describe their family dog after a walk. The griminess evoked by this expression and our Yorkshire roots made the phrase an ideal name for our company and the work we produce.
Tell us about your latest production, The Hunger. What inspired it?
Ideas for The Hunger first came around when Maddie considered the fact that of all of the post-apocalyptic horror stories she knew, the majority were US-based, male-led narratives. This made Maddie wonder what would a story in this genre look like with a mother and daughter relationship at the forefront?
Better yet, what would a mother and daughter relationship look like in a post-apocalyptic Yorkshire Dales?
Tell us more about the play’s two characters, Deborah and Meghan.
Deborah is a single mother to Meghan, her 15-year-old teenage daughter. The two of them live alone on a remote farm in the Yorkshire dales, which used to run with a popular farm shop before the disease came.
They only have the company of each other, cut off from the outside world entirely. Their relationship in parts is like any other mother-daughter relationship: they fall out, they make up, but something unnerving is bubbling beneath the surface.
The threat outside the home sounds distinctly ominous. Is it a ghostly threat though, or is it more metaphorical?
The threat comes from the people outside of their secluded farm. A neurological brain disease has swept the nation, which is caused by eating the meat of infected factory-farmed animals.
Living off their own land, Deborah and Megan have so far avoided the fate of city dwellers. The streets are now bare, and any person seen outside is a potential threat. Deborah treats them as such, whereas Megan is more willing to hope they’re just normal people trying to get help for the desperate situation they are all in.
You first staged the show in 2021. Has it changed much since then?
The Hunger has been a three-year journey in the making. In June 2021, we put on our original two-hour show at Dina Venues in Sheffield. We then took the show on tour around northern England, before eventually taking it to Edinburgh Festival Fringe, for which we cut it down to a Fringe-friendly hour-long production. It’s this version that’s coming to Greenwich Theatre this week.
Greenwich Theatre marks the show’s London debut. Are you taking it anywhere else before or after?
We are actively open to programming enquiries and are speaking to venues across the UK.
If you are interested in talking to us about bringing The Hunger to a venue or arts festival, please do get in touch!
Lastly, is there a message in the story for the audience?
Our Director Natalie believes the story ultimately makes us question how far you will go to protect the ones you love.
The play evokes fear and discomfort within an audience as they watch this visceral and unpredictable relationship unfold in a world that feels very dangerous.
We can all connect to the feeling of being isolated, only The Hunger explores the complexities through the lens of gritty horror.
The Hunger is showing at Greenwich Theatre, Crooms Hill, London SE10 8ES.
October 13 & 14, 7:30pm.
Admission: £13.50.
