Meet Nicole Redfern, Associate Director of The Hatchling

Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and journey with The Hatchling? 

My name is Nicole Redfern and I am a director and theatre maker based in the South West. I primarily make new, devised, creative work with a focus on ensemble devising, visual and physical storytelling and, of course, puppetry and object manipulation. I also work quite a lot in community engagement and co-creative processes, working with community groups to develop original artistic outputs.  

I've been involved with The Hatchling since 2019, which was the final R&D phase before the show was brought to life, and I’ve been with the project on each of its outings since then. We started in Plymouth, which is where I live, and then went to London for the Platinum Jubilee and then onto Wakefield this summer for Our Year. In that time, we have worked in factory buildings, sheds, warehouses, fields, and city centres, and it’s all been brilliant. 

 
Can you describe the collaborative directing process for The Hatchling, and what you enjoy about it? 

The director Mervyn Millar and I work very closely and collaboratively. We spend time before we are joined by the cast thinking about what we want to cover each week of rehearsals, what our targets are, and then we come up with a loose structure. This process is key because the show is very ambitious, so it’s important for us to plan carefully to ensure we cover everything. Inevitably when we are working, we get excited by things in the room, so the plan goes out of the window a bit, but it’s useful to have it as a baseline for us to refer back to.  

Once we’re in the rehearsal space we usually work together as a pair. One of us is leading and one is observing, reflecting, feeding in and supporting individuals as needed. I really like working collaboratively like this because I tend to find two creative brains and sets of eyes and hands are better than one! It gives space and scope for both of us to notice different things. We both bring in our different expertise and that speaks to different aspects of the performance and the puppet. Through collaboration there's a lot more variety, strength, scope, and subtlety brought to the piece.

It also means that beyond the formal rehearsal day there is space for dialogue, troubleshooting, and developing ideas and solving problems together. 

It is quite useful having two people, particularly as we approach the performance dates, as it means we can run more split calls to work on different areas and aspects of the piece at one time.

 
Do you have a favourite part of the show? 

All of it. It’s such a wonderful, varied show and because each day is 7.5 hours of continuous improvisation it’s never the same. It’s always able to surprise you and things are always fresh and new. That being said, I think my favourite bits are the morequiet and more sensitive moments of the day. I really love the hatch, which starts the whole show, and really gets you thinking about what it would be like for a creature to be born. Similarly, I really like the lullabies in the evening when the dragon is falling asleep – we sometimes explore 'if a dragon were to dream, what would she dream about?' which is such a wonderful thought exercise. I love those quiet and subtle moments and the care and detail that the puppeteers bring to them.

 
What has been the most special part about working on The Hatchling? 

It’s all been really special. It’s an enormously magical project to work on. Every time we come back it feels new. 

I love working to deliver a creative project outside in a non-traditional space. It brings The Hatchling to a wider range of people, new audiences, and people who might not otherwise engage, and that always feels special. 

It’s also such a fantastic team of people to work with. Everyone is so creative, ambitious, and brave and there is consistently so much care, thought, and reflection that goes into this process.  

This summer in Wakefield all of the community groups worked really hard to develop thoughtful responses to the dragon and it was really special to go on that journey with them ahead of the show weekend. 

 
Is there anything else you’re working on currently or in the near future that you’d like to shout about? 

Yes! I am about to go into rehearsals for a really lovely children’s puppetry show The Whale’s Tale. I’m assisting director Edie Edmundson and the show is going to premiere at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth at the end of October- in front of a huge tank of real-life fish! 

I’m off to the Isles of Scilly in a few weeks' time to deliver a programme of creative wrap around for another children’s puppetry show called The Goat Show. 

I’m also currently working on a co-created sound scape with sound artist Daniel Harvey. This is a heritage project commission for Exeter Cathedral, which will feature in their newTreasures Gallery in early 2025.