Latest Production from Dead Rabbits Theatre, Founded at St Mary’s, Receives Rave Reviews in Canada

Dead Rabbits Theatre, founded by Samuel Buitekant and Kasia Zaremba-Byrne of St Mary’s University, Twickenham, has recently received high accolades for My Love lies Frozen in the Ice, at both the Calgary Fringe Festival and the Edmonton Fringe Festival.

 Noted by critics as being a “Deeply theatrical piece of theatre, ambitious and strange and wonderful”, the company, which includes St Mary’s alumnus Woody Franklyn and current Physical Theatre student Milly Ramone and Max Sly amongst its cast received the ‘Best Emerging Artist’ Award at the Calgary Fringe Festival. From there, the company moved to the Edmonton Fringe Festival where the production sold-out six out of seven shows at a 150-seater venue, received two five star reviews and picked up another two awards.

In addition, Dead Rabbits Theatre was also chosen to be one of four companies out of 220 shows to be given two extra performances in the fringe’s main 350-seater venue, completing the run of sold-out events.

Dead Rabbits Theatre is a young physical theatre company that also received 5-star reviews last year for its first show ‘The Dragon’. The company also won media and staff picks at Edmonton Fringe in 2016. 

My Love lies Frozen in the Ice will be performed on the St Mary’s campus in Strawberry Hill this week, with tickets available to purchase here.

Kasia Zaremba-Byrne commented: “We were astounded and humbled by the response from Canadian audiences. We never expected such a success and we are very grateful. The company, which is largely made up of people who I taught at St Mary's, can hopefully make next steps in UK. We can't wait to play our very visual and physical show to audiences in Britain.”

“We are particularly excited to be back at St Mary’s this week, for the cast it will be a poignant moment to be ‘back where it all started’ and I feel sure our friends at St Mary’s will be blown away by how far they have come.”

Dead Rabbits Theatre relies on visual, ensemble storytelling, live music, puppetry and large dose of humour, with the aim of trying to connect on a personal and intimate level with our audiences. 

Those attending the performance this Thursday at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, can expect to see massive balloons and blowing gales and polar bears from a company fast becoming known as ‘masters of stagecraft’.

 Kasia Zaremba-Byrne is the artistic director of Dead Rabbits Theatre, based in United Kingdom. She has previously worked as a Movement Director for Complicite and for NIE (New International Encounter). She created and led MA Physical Theatre (International Ensemble) programme at St Mary’s University, London, UK where many successful companies came from: (Haste, Royal Kungfoolery, CakeTree) The companies won many international awards in US, South Korea and Italy.