About Icarus

Find out more about The Icarus Theatre Collective.

Why a Collective?

Icarus is unique as a mid-scale theatre company in that it functions as a collective. A team of artists lead the company under the measured Artistic Direction of company founder Max Lewendel. Each artist acts part-time on each project and has set tasks and responsibilities. In this way many projects can happen simultaneously and the company maintains a clear, strong Artistic Vision.

Each artist can also switch to full time and pitch their own major project. This can be a play, a tour, a major education project, a devised piece, virtually anything approved by the Collective. They act full time for the duration and have a team of part time staff made up of the other artists in the collective with clearly defined roles.

Artistic Policy

The Icarus Theatre Collective explores the harsh, brutal side of modern and classical drama, creating a contemporary Theatre of the Absurd while maintaining a cohesive, evocative story. Tales of mutilation, rape, and incest are not anathema to us, rather we choose to relish what others shy away from, show what others daren’t, destroy boundaries when others would create rules.

The Icarus Theatre Collective puts the individual artist at the top of its priorities. Paramount to achieving any goal is respect for artists and their differences, commitment to honesty and integrity, and devotion to the work produced.

Mission Statement

We aim to produce two mid-scale tours and one professional fringe production every year using new writing and unusual interpretations classics in diverse performance formats that are intellectual, visceral or engaging and always kinetic & dynamic: theatre that moves.

To that end, Icarus aims to team artists from the international community with British artists, experienced artists with promising young professionals, to enable both groups to build rapport and grow as artists. We will not always seek out those who already excel at their chosen craft, but we will look for those who have the potential to become the best under our wing.

Artistic Philosophy

We explore theatre as a destructive force. An actor on stage does not create the world we, as the audience, can see. At the start there is a blank stage. The audience arrives. The stage could be any thing, any world, any time, any place. The designer destroys almost all possibilities, leaving us with his setting, his time, his place. An actor walks on stage. He could be anyone. She could do anything. Then they take action. No longer can we imagine who these people are in this world that we now know. We are left wondering what happens next? Who will live? Who will love? Who will die? As the story progresses, we learn the answers to many of these questions, destroying the possibility of any other outcome existing.

Yet this very destruction is more liberating, more freeing, more exploratory than any creative act could ever be. The audience is forced to imagine because the creation on stage is subject to the point of view of every person watching. Two friends or two lovers, sitting inches from each other, can leave the auditorium and argue about who was the hero, who the enemy, what message was told. All has been destroyed, so anything can exist and truly, finally, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Company History

Formed in the winter of 2003/2004, a small, informal group of theatre professionals working in various sectors of the industry embarked on their first professional production as an ensemble. Audiences packed in and critics raved: "50's absurdism made over as 90's, in-yer-face, apocalypticism!" The aftermath developed into what is now The Icarus Theatre Collective.

Our next production was named Critics' Choice in Time Out and The Church of England Newsletter. Five more critics lauded the production and we were on our way to creating a solid repertoire of theatrical work.

Many of our artists then collaborated on the British premiere of Gates of Gold by Frank McGuinness at the Finborough Theatre. Time Out gave the show Critics' Choice and the Evening Standard joined in with their lead critic, Nicholas de Jongh, giving the show his Pick of the Week.

In 2005 Icarus registered formally as a company and the Finborough Theatre commissioned us to produce a piece of new writing entitled Albert's Boy by Finborough writer-in-residence, James Graham. The show starred Tony Award winner Victor Spinetti alongside a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The pair were dynamite, scooping three headlines in the reviews section of major publications and glowing write-ups from over a dozen other reputable sources. The author won the esteemed Pearson Playwright Award for the show, his first show in London, and the Finborough Theatre won the Peter Brook Empty Space Award (who wrote of our production, "Unforgettable… Import no export").

After a break of 18 months, Icarus came back together to produce The Lesson by Eugène Ionesco which toured to 37 venues across the country, transferred to Assembly Rooms at Hill Street Theatre for the duration of the Edinburgh Festival, and finally across the seas to Romania where we scooped up two major awards. While touring we received four-star-or-better in 15 publications.

Our production of The Time of Your Life used 25 actors in one of the smallest, most prestigious Off-West-End theatres, The Finborough Theatre.

In 2009 we transferred our tour of Vincent in Brixton to three number one touring houses including the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Devonshire Park Theatre, and Theatre Royal Windsor. We also produced our first Shakespeare piece, a mid-scale tour of Othello using actor-musicians playing violins, violas, and cellos. Both these projects marked the beginning of our collaboration with Original Theatre Company with whom we are currently touring Journey’s End.

The rest of 2010 holds great promise with a highly sexual piece of new writing about a gay teenager in 1981 Northern Ireland, Rip Her to Shreds, and around 100 performances of our second Shakespeare play, Hamlet done in the style of Greek Chorus. We are also collaborating with Blackeyed Theatre to produce an upper mid-scale tour of the first major revival of Alan Bennet's The Madness of George III.

Short History

Icarus productions include Coyote Ugly (Critics' Choice in Time Out and The Church of England Newsletter), Albert's Boy starring Tony Award winner Victor Spinetti. The author won the esteemed Pearson Playwright Award for the show, and the Finborough Theatre won the Peter Brook Empty Space Award (who wrote of our production, "Unforgettable… Import no export").

After a break of 18 months, Icarus produced The Lesson by Eugène Ionesco which toured to 37 venues across the country, transferred to Assembly Rooms at Hill Street Theatre, the Old Red Lion Theatre and across the seas to Romania where we scooped up two major awards. While touring we received four-star-or-better reviews in 15 publications. 

We have toured Vincent in Brixton across mid-scale theatres and three number one touring houses andcompleted a mid-scale tour of Othello.  We are now touring Journey’s End and are producing even larger tours of Hamlet and The Madness of George III.