Wild Swimming

by Marek Horn – 13 to 16 September 2023

A kaleidoscopic exploration of cultural progress…

Nell and Oscar meet on a beach. It’s 1595… or maybe 1610. Oscar has returned from university and Nell is doing nothing at all. They will meet here, again and again, on this beach for the next four hundred years. Stuff will change. As it does with time. They will try to keep up.

Marek Horn’s play Wild Swimming is an interrogation of gender and privilege, and a wilfully ignorant history of English Literature.

Photography by Timothy Winn

Cast

Nell – Catriona Clarke

Catriona moved to Cambridge in 2016 and joined the theatre scene shortly afterwards. She has played Little Sally in Urinetown, Beth in Merrily We Roll Along, April in Company, and appeared in Kinky Boots, Rhythm of Life, Someone in the Crowd, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Hear the People Sing. She also directed Let the Sunshine In for Festival Players.

For Between the Bars, she has played Wendla in Spring Awakening, and appeared in Once, Blue Stockings, and Dogfight.

When not treading the boards, she works in scientific communications, and in her (limited) spare time, you can find her walking her shih tzus while listening to audiobooks (any recommendations welcome).

Oscar – Matt Bairstow

Matt trained on the Oxford School of Drama’s acting foundation course and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s Writing for Performance Course. His first performance with Between the Bars came back in December 2022 as the role of ‘Two’ in a production of Jack Thorne’s After Life. Excited for a new challenge he quickly reunited with Between the Bars to take on this fun and unique fringe style play.

His other most recent roles include John Watkins in Horrox (Corkscrew Theatre), Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (BAWDS and Corkscrew Theatre), Lysander in Supernatural Shakespeare (BAWDS) and James Watson in Photograph 51 (Combined Actors of Cambridge).

Outside of acting he is also a composer, writing and performing the music for Titus & (RCSSD) and Edward Gants Amazing Feats of Loneliness, and a playwright, having his Debut short play ‘Dipuc’ performed at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.