I sat down with director Julia Stubbs and Co-Artistic Directors of What She Said Collective Lisa Minichiello and Emma Riches to find out more about Seagull coming to The Hen & Chickens Theatre this November.
Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?
Emma and Lisa: It’s everything you know and love about Chekhov with a What She Said Collective spin. We’ve changed the lens in which to view this play through, by having all characters played by women. The actors are all women; the characters retain their identities and relationships as written. It works for Shakespeare, so why not for Chekhov! We realised it suddenly becomes less about institutional privilege and patriarchy. Instead, it’s about power, desire, ageing, insecurity, identity and art! Who is willing to help who?
Julia: There’s so much humour in Seagull, alongside the longing and disappointment. These people want to be loved, to make something worthwhile, to feel that they matter – but they’re often wonderfully bad at understanding one another. I want audiences to recognise something of themselves in those contradictions. The intimacy of The Hen & Chickens means we can bring them very close to those encounters, where something can be funny and painful almost in the same breath.
What drew you to this specific story?
Emma and Lisa: Everybody has opinions on Chekhov, and most people have heard of The Seagull. Emma and Lisa first encountered this show at Drama School, 11 years ago, and were always interested in Konstantin’s need to create new forms, trying something different and breaking the mould. It seems when we’ve been launching our theatre company and creating work, we’ve done the same thing! Our primary goal was to give more roles for women in the arts. With every production, we have worked with as many women as possible, using our platform to help others be creative too. This production is no different; where else have you seen all-female Chekhov? This major change doesn’t scare us, and we are excited with what this production brings.
Julia: What draws me to it is how contemporary it feels. Who gets to be an artist? Whose work is taken seriously? What happens when your sense of yourself depends on someone else’s recognition? Those questions feel very immediate for anyone making theatre today. But they’re also bound up with family and love: Konstantin wants to find his own artistic voice, and he wants his mother to see him. That combination of creative ambition and very personal need is compelling.
What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this production to life?
Emma and Lisa: One of the biggest challenges we have found is working with such a big cast. Our previous two productions had 4 and 3 characters, respectively; in Seagull we have 9! But we are seeing this as a wonderful opportunity to showcase a brilliant cast of women in this Chekhovian classic.
Julia: For me, the challenge is holding all those individual worlds together. Each character has something urgent at stake, even when the others barely notice it. You need to give those desires space while keeping the life of the whole ensemble moving. There’s also a delicate balance between comedy and pain. I’m interested in finding the humour without diminishing what someone is feeling, and the sadness without making everything solemn.
How does the design of your show (set, sound, or lighting) impact the presentation of your story?
Emma and Lisa: We have made some really interesting decisions when it comes to the design of this show. The Hen and Chickens Theatre is going to be utterly transformed! The walls and floor of the theatre are going to be lined with pages from the script; the working, annotated versions of the cast scripts. Director Julia Stubbs’s vision is to base the show in a rehearsal room, as Seagull is, after all, a play about artistic forms and even features a play within a play. The play is being created before the audience’s eyes, surrounding the actors on all sides with the text itself, quite literally immersing us all in the world of the play.
Julia: The rehearsal room brings the act of making theatre into view. It feels particularly right for a play in which people argue about art, attempt to create it and judge one another’s efforts. The annotated script pages carry the traces of that work: questions, decisions, possibilities. Surrounding the actors and audience with them makes the text part of the physical space. I want that setting to invite audiences into the process of imagining this world with us.
If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?
Emma and Lisa: Revolutionary? Creative? The courage to create. New forms, new voices.
Julia: The courage to create. Creating something means risking failure, misunderstanding or indifference. That’s true of the artists in the play, and it’s something we recognise as a company bringing this production to life. There’s vulnerability in putting your work before other people, but there’s also the possibility of connection. That’s what makes the risk worth taking.
Seagull runs at The Hen & Chickens Theatre, London, on 18 – 28 November 2026. Tickets available at https://unrestrictedview.co.uk/events/the-seagull=
