Albatross at Hotbed 2024

About Albatross

Albatross is Menagerie’s newly commissioned play from award-winning writer, Martha Loader.   

Alice returns from a gruelling 3-month trip to the Antarctic.  But home has changed in her time away. There have been floods and death. There has been romance. Alice’s daughter sleeps. Alice’s mother has never been more awake.  And a visitor is given the keys to the house. All Alice wants is to save the world and be a hero – too much to ask?

Albatross takes place through one long night in the kitchen of a Cambridgeshire house. But it draws in stories from the far side of the earth, where ice is cracking, melting and disappearing. It explores family, care and the boundaries of love in the age of climate catastrophe.  

The Journey

Albatross, written by 2022 Bruntwood Judges Prize-winning playwright, Martha Loader, will have it’s first preview performance at Hotbed Theatre Festival 2024!

Martha has been working alongside Menagerie Theatre as their commissioned playwright over the past year to create Albatross. She has also been working with the British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, to gain an insigt into their work to inform her writing.

Albatross was first performed as a staged reading in March and has since been developed by Martha, alongside Menagerie Co-Director Patrick Morris, into the script that you will see at Hotbed 2024. The full cast have been rehearsing together with Patrick since the start of July to put this preview performance together in just under 3 weeks!

The Team

Martha Loader: Writer

Patrick Morris: Director

Michaela Polakova: Musical Composer

Chris Dobrowolski: Set Designer

Eric Michal Colvin: Actor (Martin)

Hannah Ringham: Actor (Eve)

Caroline Rippin: Actor (Alice)

Albatross will return for touring in Spring 2025!