A powerful, intimate touring production of David Greig’s acclaimed play, exploring a priest’s search for answers after a mass shooting; The Events features a local community choir – a piece that investigates themes of resilience, empathy, and forgiveness. Originally staged for audiences at the wonderful Cumbernauld Theatre in October 2024, Wonder Fools tours The Events across Scotland. The production’s movement director, and Wonder Fools co-founder Robbie Gordon took some time to speak to us about the show’s return.
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What compelled you to bring The Events back now, and how has time changed your relationship with the material?
When we first performed the show at Cumbernauld in 2024, we never thought we’d have the opportunity to revisit it. Fortunately, since then Wonder Fools has become a regularly funded organisation with Creative Scotland and this was one of the first projects we wanted to return to in our first year.
Since the last staging, questions around polarisation, masculinity, grief and belonging have only intensified. Returning to it feels less like a revival and more like a continuation of a conversation that never really stopped. It’s a real privilege to be able to return to something. For us the work is never finished. The actors and I have been really surprised at how much more detail and nuance we’ve been able to find in the piece which is great because what drew me to the play in the first place is its complexity and the fact it operates in a knotty grey area, offering no easy answers. Hopefully we’ve gone even deeper and messier into the material but also we feel like we’ve found more lightness this time too.
Would you mind explaining the show and its revisiting of trauma, community, and meaning for new audiences?
At its heart, The Events follows a woman trying to understand what can’t be understood. Claire survives an act of unimaginable violence and becomes obsessed with finding meaning in it – not to excuse it, but to attempt to comprehend it and therefore survive it. The play moves between trauma and connection, asking whether community can hold pain without explaining it away. The show in some way recognises how grief ripples outward, and how meaning, if it exists at all, is something we build together rather than discover alone.
What conversations did you have with the cast about portraying Claire’s unravelling without sensationalism?
We talked a lot about how much things cost her at different moments, and how that’s not necessarily a simple linear graph. Claire, the character, goes to some really dark places that are the antithesis to her moral compass as it exists before the attack. We also spoke about her journey as a quest and what that means from a traditional storytelling and ritualistic perspective. We focused on specificity rather than scale: small ruptures, moments of disconnection, shifts in rhythm. The aim is not to display trauma, but to let the audience sit alongside someone whose internal compass has been knocked off course. That meant trusting stillness, trusting silence, and allowing the character’s contradictions to exist without explanation.
How does working with a different community choir each night shape the performance?
It genuinely shapes everything. It’s quite striking how different the four choirs are (in Cumbernauld, Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh). They all have really different energies and personalities. I think that’s probably embodied best in the choir song at the start of the show, which they choose themselves. They are all really different and set the tone for the night in really different ways. The choir alters the pacing, the emotional temperature, even the sense of risk in the room. That variability keeps the show alive and is its heartbeat. Sam and Claire have to respond to that different rhythm every night. So the piece adjusts around real people, not fixed performance habits. Emotionally, it reminds you that the story isn’t abstract. It’s being held, sung and witnessed by a living community every night.
Did you find new ways to use silence and space in returning to the show?
The great thing about returning to something is you see everything afresh. Finding better ways into a moment or even an articulation of a feeling that unlocks something in the actors. We’ve worked carefully with space so that moments could breathe, or sometimes feel uncomfortably exposed. Holding a silence a second longer than expected can make an audience lean in rather than relax. Returning to the piece, I trusted those gaps more, and resisted the urge to smooth things over. The unanswered questions and apparent contradictions can need room to register fully.
How did you guide the actor playing The Boy in balancing the human and symbolic?
For every scene in the play bar one, The Boy is a representation of Claire’s imagination. Her fears, her hopes and a manifestation of her obsessive search for meaning. On top of this, Sam has the challenge of creating a dozen distinct characters who need to be rooted in their own truth and distinctiveness but also inherently echo The Boy simply because they are being played by him! So it’s been fun trying to balance all those things. Sam is magnificent (as is Claire) and has pushed everything further with the Boy than even I thought possible this time round.
What support structures were in place for the cast working with such heavy material?
We built care into the process rather than adding it on afterwards. That meant clear boundaries in rehearsal, regular check-ins, and permission to step back when needed. We also paid attention to transitions, how performers enter and leave the emotional world of the play. The aim was sustainability, not endurance. This is difficult material, but it shouldn’t cost people their wellbeing to perform it. In addition, we play a lot of games and tell a lot of rubbish jokes (particularly me). It’s important to keep the room as light as possible. Taking the work seriously, but not ourselves. Creating a positive atmosphere that allows us to go to the darker places more safely and supported by everyone in the room.
What conversations do you hope this revival sparks in 2026?
I hope it opens space for slower conversations. More listening. About how we live with grief, how we respond to violence without becoming defined by it, and what community means in 2026. In a climate shaped by constant outrage and noise, The Events asks us wrestle with difficult questions without coming to easy or quick conclusions. It asks us to believe in the potential for the collective to enact change. If audiences leave thinking more positively about ourselves as a society, as a community, then we’ve done our jobs.
The Events is currently touring Scotland:
Tron Theatre, Glasgow: February 19th – 21st
Dundee Rep: February 25th
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh: February 27th – 28th.
Photo credit – Mihaela Bodlovic
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