Emballage Ensemble on The Writing of Stones
After the success of our 2025 Camden Fringe Interviews, we thought it only right to attempt a repeat for 2026. So throughout July we’ll be publishing new interviews each day to give a taste of what to expect from London’s best fringe theatre festival. The festival starts Monday 3 August this year, so we may give ourselves a couple of days off inbetween the end of the interviews and the first shows… then again, we might not.
You can find out more about Camden Fringe, along with details of every show playing this August here. You can also find all of this year’s interviews as they are published here.
In July 2025, international theatre collective Emballage Ensemble faced a delicious, if deeply alarming, stroke of irony: their brand-new physical production confronting the realities of the global climate crisis was abruptly cancelled on a sweltering Paris night due to a heat-induced power cut.
Returning to the stage for Camden Fringe 2026 amid a summer of relentless London heatwaves, The Writing of Stones at The Cockpit feels more essential and immediate than ever. Named after a manifesto by Polish avant-garde theatre legend Tadeusz Kantor, the ensemble blends intense physical theatre, puppetry, and deep environmental philosophy to explore how our language shapes our conception of nature. We caught up with company members Dominic Weatherby and Emma Wagstaff to talk about treating geological stones as actual theatrical collaborators, embracing beautiful accidents on stage, and their brand-new, unmissable creative direction.
If you had to describe the vibe of your show in just one sentence, what would it be and how does it manifest on stage?
Like riding a rollercoaster through an art gallery.
Why is 2026 the perfect time for this show to be seen?
In July 2025, our show about the climate crisis was cancelled on a sweltering Paris night due to a heat-induced power cut. The irony was not lost on us. As we battle relentless heatwaves in London this summer, the core theme of our show, about how we conceive of nature in our language and our culture, only feels ever more urgent and in need of the thick and thorny reflection we aim to offer.
Is this version how you originally envisioned it or has it changed drastically since you first put pen to paper?
The Writing of Stones evolved through research, experimentation, and embodied play between four international performers, and it changed significantly over the creative process. We have previously presented versions of the piece at Hotbed Festival (Cambridge Junction) and VOILA Festival (Camden People’s Theatre), but we like to keep refining our projects so there is always something new for audiences to discover.
A key development this year is that we have a new member of our company, Elmira Oberholzer. Her unique propositions and skills as an actor, philosopher, and puppeteer have shifted the show in a new direction that we are really excited to share.
What is the “secret sauce” that makes your ensemble group dynamic work?
A celebration of weirdness combined with care for each other. Our show seeks out tonal ambiguities and destabilises categories. We think that quality of the work emerges organically from a truly collaborative space which provides the safety to take creative risks. We also hope it sets up a relationship with audiences, where they feel permitted and, hopefully, excited to step into the unknown with us.
If your show had to be described as a meal, what would it be?
A milkshake. We would love to tell you why, but we promised there would be no spoilers!
What’s the weirdest or most unconventional prop used in your show, and how did it come to be part of the production?
Our show is about stones, but for a long time there were no actual stones in it! That changed when one Christmas our geologist friend gave us a fragment of labradorite, a beautiful stone with shimmering flashes of blue, green, gold, and copper. We brought it into rehearsal and it suddenly changed the trajectory of the piece. We like to think of objects and materials as collaborators whose unique proclivities influence our work. This was a beautiful example of that principle in practice.
What’s the most valuable piece of advice you’ve received during your career, and how has it influenced this show?
Embrace accidents. Early in our career, we spent time in Kraków with members of Tadeusz Kantor’s ensemble Cricot 2, Andrzej and Teresa Wełmiński. They taught us many things, but a key takeaway was inviting reality, or, the irreversible course of things, into the creative process.
They encouraged us to think: what is the possibility of the accident or mistake? For us, this is the opposite of compromise or accepting work of a lower standard. Instead, it’s making a commitment to radical openness, to staying attuned to the actual potential of the work as it is evolving. When you are receptive to the unexpected, genuinely original work can start to emerge. Cricot 2 inspired our company’s name, ‘Emballage’ (the title of one of Kantor’s manifestos), and that commitment to inquiry remains an abiding inspiration.
Many thanks to Dominic and Emma for chatting to us. The Writing of Stones will play at The Cockpit from Monday 3 to Wednesday 5 August as part of Camden Fringe.
