Caryl Churchill's play Mad Forest is a response to events in Romania following the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989. It presents a kaleidoscopic and often surreal look at life under oppression and the painful difficulties of lasting change.
In early 1990, Churchill was asked by Mark Wing-Davey, director of the Central School of Speech and Drama, if she would like to join his students on a trip to Bucharest, to work with students there and then to write a play for the Central students end of year show. Ceaușescu’s dictatorship had been overthrown only a few months before and, as Churchill writes in her introduction to Plays: Three (Nick Hern Books, 1998), “Emotions in Bucharest were still raw and the Romanian students and other people we met helped us to understand what Romania had been like under Ceaușescu as well as what happened in December and what was happening while we were there.”
The play focuses on the reactions of ordinary people to the sudden and dramatic events that unfolded in late December 1989, focusing in particular on two families, the Vladu family and the Antonescu family. Part I tells the story of Lucia Vladu’s engagement and wedding to an American, which arouses the suspicions of the Securitate (Romania’s secret police). Part II features testimony from a host of Romanian citizens (none of whom have appeared in Part I), about their experiences of the revolution. Part III begins with a dialogue between a vampire and a dog before reintroducing several characters from Part I, now in a hospital having sustained injuries in the fray. They discuss the nature and the impact of the revolution.
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This amateur production of “Mad Forest” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd.
on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk
Author bios can be found on www.concordtheatricals.co.uk.
“The videotaping or making of electronic or other audio and/or visual recordings or streams of this production
is strictly prohibited and a violation of United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.”
External Venue (Barcelona)
Special thanks to Gaudí Theatre for hosting the IAB productions.
Please take note:
Content Warnings & Caution
Contains depictions of political violence, oppression, and strong language.
Director
When Mad Forest was first performed, it responded to a specific historical rupture: the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and the collapse of a political system that had shaped everyday life for decades. Yet what makes the play extraordinary — and deeply relevant today — is that it refuses to remain trapped in history and its questions continue to echo across contemporary society, where political radicalization and social changes are continuously happening in front of our eyes.
Churchill’s work reminds us that history is not abstract, but lived through families, friendships, bodies, and voices.
For the ensemble, the piece presents both an immense challenge and an invaluable opportunity. Mad Forest demands emotional precision, intellectual rigor, and extraordinary flexibility from its actors. Characters emerge briefly and disappear, scenes shift rapidly between realism and fragmentation, and performers must navigate multiple perspectives without reducing them to simple political symbols. In rehearsing this production, our ensemble has explored not only the mechanics of performance, but also collective storytelling and the responsibility of bearing witness through art.
Ultimately, Mad Forest reminds us that revolutions are never experienced as clean narratives. They are confusing, contradictory, painful, hopeful, and unfinished. Perhaps that is why the play still speaks so powerfully today. And perhaps there are still many revolutions that need to happen yet.
PS: We have a lesbian couple in the play, unthinkable under Ceaucescu’s dictatorship and unthinkable in many parts of the world nowadays. But as Brecht said, “art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
The show will be performed the following dates:
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