The Front
The Front is a new play by Sam Cottington, exploring how history feels, rather than how it was.
When Cordula and Stefan meet, they discover they aren’t like the others. What happens next is pretty extreme, but then they are living through particularly extreme times. There is Belgium, the Western Front at the close of the First World War, an isolated farm house in Bavaria, as the Second World War escalates, and present day Berlin, on the edge of the city. Unfortunately, through it all, they have each other.
Cordula and Stefan are just trying their best to live, because, for reasons unclear to them, they are unable to die.
London Performance Studios presents the premiere of this first iteration of The Front. It has been commissioned and produced by London Performance Studios as part of the Associate Artists Programme.
Dates and Times
Fri 16 & Sat 17 October / Doors 7:30 PM / Performance 8 PM
Thu 22 & Fri 23 October / Doors 7 PM / Performance 7:30 PM
Run-time: 2.5 hours including interval
Tickets
Sliding Scale / Book here
Location
Studio 1, London Performance Studios
Entry via Ormside Street
For more info on how to get to London Performance Studios, click here
Content warnings
Depictions of blood
Violence and war
Sexual content
Suicide
Reference to sexual violence
References to infanticide and pregnancy
Smoking
Cast
Adam Barlow as Heinrich / Crony (Fri 16 & Sat 17 October)
Lewis Blomfield as Heinrich / Crony (Thu 22 / Fri 23 October)
Amelda Brown as Cordula
Florence Dobson as Barbara
Joe Flynn as Friedrich / Crony 2
Mark Kilcawley as Stefan
George Smale as Gregor / Wolf
Joe Windley at Karl
Benedict Wishart as Prisoner of War / Officer
Creative Team
Writer: Sam Cottington
Director: Sam Cottington
Costume and Set: Sam Cottington
Dramaturgy: Lucy Morrison
Rehearsal Director: Than Hussein Clark
Assistant Director: Meeri Aro
Set Design: Gethin Jones and Than Hussein Clark
Set Build: Gethin Jones, Tim Starr, Aidan Duffy, and Rob Cooper
Sound Design: Jack Clearwater and Niloo Sharifi
Lights: Haley Yiu and Cheng Keng
Deputy Stage Manager: Holly Cooper
Production Coordinator: Middleton Maddocks
Movement Director: Giaele Mattioli
Assistant Movement Director: Luis Odriozola
Voice Coach: Joe Windley
Graphic Design and Photography: Igal Perets
Production Photography and Videography: ChewBoy Productions
About
Sam Cottington is an artist, writer, and theatre maker from London. Through interdisciplinary experiments in collage, he often presents ‘reality’ as contradictory and mutable: the product of specific historical and social economies. The texture of experience and the production and trajectory of the theatre, the family, and desiring subjectivities are recurrent in his practice, often culminating in devised interventions which address their formal capacities.
He is an Associate Artist at London Performance Studios. Recent exhibitions and performances have been presented at Kunsthalle Winterthur (2026); SculptureCenter, New York (2025); Louche Ops, Berlin, (2025); Nir Altman, Munich (2024); zaza’, Milan (2023); and Ginny on Frederick, London (2022). Phone Plays, his first collection of plays, was published by Montez Press in collaboration with London Performance Studios (2024). He is a graduate of Monica Baer’s class at Städelschule, Frankfurt (2025), and Goldsmiths, University of London.
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