Bog Body, Barons Court Theatre
Camden Fringe 2025 is almost upon us, so our reviews will start to appear very soon. But in the meantime we still have plenty of interviews left to share with you as we push towards our target of 100. We will publish new interviews every day of July, you can find them all here.
Some of us at ET always feel there isn’t enough scares on the stage, so are always delighted to find follow lovers of the horror genre. Which means we were overjoyed when we spotted Bog Body in the Camden Fringe listings. So we had to reach out to Olivia Cordell and Audrey O’Farrell to find out more about this creepy tale that they will be bringing to Barons Court Theatre on 15 and 16 August (tickets here).
Olivia is an actor, horror creator and social media personality with a dedicated fan following of 160,000 for her family-friendly horror brand Sweet & Spooky. Olivia’s feature horror film script BETWEEN was a finalist for the prestigious 2024 Sitges WomanInFan residency. Her credits include Disney, HBO, the La Jolla Playhouse, and more.
Audrey is a London-based theatre director and graduate in Theatre Directing from Royal Holloway. Her directing credits include Stupid Fucking Bird (21ten Theatre), The Harvest, Love and Information, and new works like I’m a Slut and Sababba. She was awarded a Meritorious Achievement Award for Directing during her BA at George Fox.
What can audiences expect from the show?
Olivia: Bog Body is a scary and unconventional new solo show, presented like a scientific lecture on bog bodies – which are prehistoric human remains found in peat bogs. But as unexplained supernatural phenomena derail the lecture, the Speaker is forced to reckon with what could be an ancient curse. It’s spooky, it’s thrilling, it’s funny, and it’s heartbreaking. Audiences are in for a ride!
Is Camden Fringe going to be the show’s first time on stage, or have you already performed elsewhere?
Olivia: After a successful workshop production at the Cockpit Theatre in 2024, the Camden Fringe will be Bog Body’s world premiere! We’re thrilled to get the chance to put on a full production, especially with the exciting technical aspects we have planned. We have the funding to fully realize Bog Body at the Fringe level due to support using public funding by Arts Council England.
What was your inspiration behind the show?
Olivia: When I moved to London, I was dealing with a breakup and starting over in a new country with no support system. Early in my move, I went to the British Museum and saw the Lindow Man (a real-life bog body) on display – and I was instantly fascinated. We don’t have peat bogs in the US, so bog bodies are a uniquely European curiosity. Seeing the 2,000-year-old Lindow Man with all of his scars, traumas, and wounds perfectly preserved got me thinking about the fragility of humanity – while also making my skin crawl a little bit. I became (more than) a little obsessed with bog bodies and eventually I had to write about them.
Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?
Audrey: While first working with the playwright and actor Olivia on the play, we focused on the Speaker’s journey and her relationship to the bog body, her own trauma, and the haunting that plays out in the story. However, after the first iteration of the show at the Cockpit, it became clear that Olivia and I needed to develop the researcher’s relationship with the audience. Since the form of the show is an academic presentation, it establishes the audience as part of the play world and active participants in the haunting. In this iteration, we are interested in exploring both how we can take the audience on the journey of the haunting and how the stories they share are a key solution in helping the researcher feel empowered to face her ghosts and the ghosts of bog bodies past.
How challenging has this role been for you?
Olivia: This is my first solo production and also one of the most personal roles I’ve ever played. While the character I play is not based on myself, the play *is* about the wounds that all humans share – and so it gets very personal. The play is a rollercoaster of emotions, starting comedic, then things get scary – and tension ratchets up until, finally, there’s a heart wrenching cathartic break. I’m already working on my self-care regimen to be able to pull off this performance night after night.
What brought you all together?
Olivia: This is actually a crazy story – I’ve known Audrey since I was about 15 years old where we met in another country (!) and then we lost touch for over ten years until happenstance brought us back together. I’ll let her tell the story.
Audrey: Olivia and I both went to the same high school in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. While in school we worked on probably six plays together but somehow never became friends. (We were in different years, slightly different social groups and we never clicked). Flash forward ten years and we both had stayed in the arts and found ourselves in London. I had stayed pretty consistent with directing, while Olivia had branched out and trained in acting, producing, writing for theatre and films. She put out an open call for a director for Bog Body on her instagram and a mutual friend recommended me. A year later and we’ve worked on many projects together and bonded over our experiences as Americans living in London (and how much we miss Taco Bell) but most importantly it’s been really nice working on projects with someone who has so much context about your background. There’s such an ease in communication with that sort of collaboration, it’s something I’ve learned not to take for granted.
What has been the biggest challenge in realising the writer’s vision for the show?
Audrey: The biggest challenge comes in the form of the show itself. Staging a horror show about a bog body haunting a researcher creates technical challenges. How do we create a bog body? Is the body human? How gruesome should the body look? After conversations with Olivia, it became clear that it was important for the body to move autonomously and not be animated by an actor. This is where the decision to build a robot came in. With a robot that moves on its own and unexplainably arises from under a sheet, we would be able to replicate the shock and mystery that the audience experiences in horror. We wanted the audience to feel unsettled about the body’s presence in the space, and we came to the decision that the robot would help support this vision.
How important is audience interaction to you?
Audrey: Audience interaction is hugely important for this show. As we’ve mentioned, the form of the show is set as an academic presentation, meaning that from the beginning of the play, the audience has a role to play: fellow academics at a talk. Because of this, the barrier between performer and audience is removed. This establishes the rules for the rest of the play. The audience hears private conversations between the speaker and her partner. In these moments, they witness her shame. Later in the play, she asks them to share personal stories of how they got scars. This request requires a lot of vulnerability from the audience, so we are working hard to establish trust between performer and the audience early on.
Are there any plans for what comes next after the show has finished its run – for you or the show?
Hopefully we’ll see audiences at Camden Horror festival in October!
What is the weirdest or most unconventional prop used in your show?
Olivia: The play is about bog bodies, so of course we had to get a life-size animatronic mummy robot made! The robotics are being designed by former IBM and Amazon inventor Sean Tracy and the prop design is being executed by horror “flesh” artist Libby Morris. It’s going to look like a real-life bog body, and – most importantly – it moves.
Thanks to Olivia and Audrey for taking the time to tell us more about Bog Body. You can catch the show when it plays at Barons Court Theatre on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 August.
