- Programme -

Rachel Wilcoxx (she/her)

Associate Lighting Designer

• SUPPORT VOLOZ COLLECTIVE •

Voloz Collective is a multi award-winning international physical theatre company that reinvents and recharges physical comedy by exploiting the capacities of the human body and blurring the lines between the theatrical and cinematic. Hailing from three different countries, our team of four was brought together by two years of study at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. With a uniquely non-hierarchical approach to theatre-making, Voloz's four co-artistic directors collaboratively write, perform, direct, and produce original devised work.

Olivia Zerphy (she/her)

Co-Artistic Director / Performer

Olivia is a Paris and New York based director and actor. A recipient of the Molly Thatcher Kazan Award for Excellence in Theatre for her direction of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal at the Martel Theatre in New York, her work has also been seen at the Moscow Art Theatre School (Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov), The Eugene O’Neill National Puppetry Conference (The Journey, Nancy Riggs) and at La Factorie in Normandy (La Poussière, original work).

Paul Lofferon (he/him)

Co-Artistic Director / Performer

Paul is a Paris and London-based director and actor. He began his career in the arts at 18, studying acrobatics at the Circus Arts School of Piste d'Azur in Cannes. Upon returning to Paris, he decided to pursue theatre and studied acting for two years at l'Ecole Internationale de theatre Jacques Lecoq. During this time, he joined the company Theatre de la Feuille, directed by Ata Wong Chun Tat. In September of 2018, the company toured its show Madman in several cities throughout China, including appearing in the Beijing International Fringe Festival. Most recently, he joined a research group led by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne around the show The Man Who at Les Bouffes du Nord. He is also currently involved in Dream by Irina Brook, an adaptation Shakespeare's Midsummer Night Dream.

Emily Wheatman (she/her)

Co-Artistic Director / Performer

Emily is a UK based actor and theatre-maker, specialising in comedy and physical theatre. A graduate of L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Emily’s previous work includes working with Manic Chord Theatre and performing in their 5* show Don’t Let Go, performing in La Poussière at La Factorie in Normandy and writing and performing with the Leeds Tealights in their award-winning Edinburgh sketch-comedy show in 2015. Her comedy work has been described as ‘Energetic and clever humour’ (EdFringe Review) and she received a special mention in the 2020 Mandy Comedy Competition: 'clever humour’.

Sam Rayner (he/him)

Co-Artistic Director / Performer

Sam is a theatre-maker and movement director. His movement direction credits for comedy include Jack Whitehall: At Large (UK & EIRE Arena Tour/Hammersmith Apollo/Netflix);

Jordan Brookes: BLEED and SHEEPS: Live and Loud (Pleasance Theatre/Soho Theatre). The List described his work with Jordan Brookes as ‘a fearless display of physicality that shape-shifts from ludicrous tomfoolery to raw menace’. In theatre, Sam co-founded Unleash the Llama - a company that creates genre-fusing comedies - and the New Renaissance Collective - a company that aims to make early opera and theatre more accessible by staging highly-physical adaptations. As an assistant/associate director, Sam’s work includes Broken Wings (Theatre Royal Haymarket, West End/International Tour); The Adventures of Pinocchio (Ambassadors Theatre, West End) and Tick, Tick… Boom (Park Theatre).

Jo Underwood is a lighting designer with work spanning theatre, opera and dance. After graduating RADA with a first class honours, she launched into a career in lighting design and associating. Jo is particularly interested in working with new writing, and more unconventional theatrical forms. Their credits include: The Paul Taylor Mills Summer Rep (Paul Taylor Mills); The Haunting Of Susan A, La Boheme (dir. Mark Ravenhill); Dirty Corset (Bang Average Theatre); Us, Aphiemi & The Friday Freedom Fighters (Pathway Theatre); The Man Who Though He Knew Too Much (Voloz Collective); Dick Whittington! (The big Tiny Theatre); La Princess de Trebizonde (New Sussex Opera); Selected Recordings of Us (Undone Theatre); Their associate LD credits include Dick Whittington: A New Dick In Town! (Above The Stag, LD Jamie Platt); and Catching Comets (Ransack Theatre, LD Matt Leventhall).

Jo Underwood (they/she)

Lighting Designer

Frederick Waxman (he/him)

Musician

About Us

The Cast

Frederick is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, primarily a keyboard player, from London. He has performed on stages including the Barbican, the Wigmore Hall, and Wiener Musikverein, as well as live on BBC Radio 3.
He read Experimental Psychology at University College, Oxford, where he was an Academic Exhibitioner and Proxime Accessit to the Susan Mary Rouse Memorial Prize for university-wide academic performance. He then attended Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and was awarded a Merit in his MMus.
In 2017 founded Ante Terminum, a theatre company specialising in site-responsive and immersive cross-arts performance, of which he is Producer and Musical Director.
He is also Musical Director of the New Renaissance Collective, for whom he arranges music and carries out musical dramaturgy. Other musical director roles include Assistant Musical Director for a Dido and Aeneas at Queille Festival in France.
Frederick composes for theatre, film, and installation, most recently for V&A community research fellow Anouska Samms short film It’s not perverse, it’s mothers. One theatrical highlight was Timetravellers at Teatr Lesi, Lviv, a new play by award-winning Ukrainian writer Anastasiia Kosodii about the conflict in Donbas, which continues to be part of repertoire at the theatre.

Lucy Butler (she/her)

Understudy

Lucy is an actor originally from Macclesfield, Cheshire. Lucy met Voloz Collective whilst collaborating during the two-year Professional Theatre course at École Jacques Lecoq, Paris, having previously trained at Guildford School of Acting, U.K. Roles whilst training included Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (Guildford School of Acting), Mrs Tottendale in The Drowsy Chaperone (Guildford School of Acting), Doris & Various in Soirée: Theatre of Gesture, Mime and Human Comedy (Paola Rizza/Jos Houben, École Jacques Lecoq), Norwegian and Female Chorus & Various in Soirée: Bouffons, Chorus and Mystére (Paola Rizza/Jos Houben, École Jacques Lecoq), Carrie Armstrong & Various in Soirée: Comic Varieties - Clown, Absurd and Cabaret (Paola Rizza/Jos Houben, École Jacques Lecoq) and Ebba, Amy & Various in Commandes (Various directors, École Jacques Lecoq). Professional credits include The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much (Cover, Voloz Collective 2022 debut UK Tour/Edinburgh Fringe run), Princess Pearl & Various in Gruffalos, Ladybirds and Other Beasts (Victoria Theatre, Singapore), Ed Miliband, Anne Robinson, Theresa May & Various in NewsRevue (Canal Café Theatre, London) and comic TV commercials for brands including Ariel, Cathedral City, Maltesers, Weetabix and Smooth Radio.

The Show

THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE KNEW TOO MUCH

Wes Anderson meets Hitchcock meets Spaghetti Western in this multi-award-winning, intercontinental, inter-genre, cinematic caper of accusations, accidents, and accents. Roger, a Frenchman in 1960's New York, has spent years following the same predictable routine, until a minor delay saves him from an explosion. Throwing his ordered world into chaos, Roger chases his would-be assassins around the globe. Raucously funny and endlessly inventive, this Lecoq-trained theatre company delights and stuns with live, original music and virtuosic acrobatics in this fast-paced, OFFIE-nominated whodunnit.