‘It was like running away with the circus’ – the thrills, shocks and genius of Kneehigh

Mike Shepherd (founder, artistic director): Kneehigh’s first show got me arrested. The Adventures of Awful Knawful, in 1980, was about the world’s greatest stuntman. We did it in Mevagissey, Cornwall, with the ridiculously brave John Mergler who became a triathlete champion. Every time I left the tent, a policeman would try to march me away because I didn’t have a performance licence. I didn’t know I needed one. When we got to the end, I did a bow – and he read me the riot act.

I’d dabbled in the London theatre scene but didn’t want to do plays. I wanted to work in a different way. Our shows were action-driven and cinematic. We’d do stunts off harbours, staging them like crazy film trailers. We did Around the World in 80 Days in 80 minutes. There was a big clock ticking – and the audience knew we’d never get through it.

Carl Grose (writer, deputy artistic director): As a teenager, Kneehigh were my heroes. It was a thrill to join them. Mike and the great playwright Nick Darke came to a show I’d written. An actor had dropped out of their new production so I appeared in The King of Prussia, Nick’s 1996 masterpiece. Ostensibly about smugglers, it’s really about the gentrification of Cornwall from outside forces versus the local way of life. Kneehigh has always evolved – a script by Nick is miles away from the landscape work that [then artistic director] Bill Mitchell did. Artists brought different processes. Even when Kneehigh had a show on Broadway, we still toured village halls.

MS: Shows for schools were our bread and butter. We’d rehearse other shows at night, which gives an added fizz. One school production started with a story I’d read but I’d forgotten the author and created it from what I recalled. It became A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. We’d meet kids as they came into the school hall and give them broomsticks. There was a pile of sacks at the far end. I’d get a kid to poke the sacks and out came Tristan Sturrock, dressed as a birdman. We’d beat out a rhythm with the sticks. Imagine the mayhem. Was this a demon or an angel? The kids split up to discuss what to do with him. Years later, Bill joined us and suggested a Gabriel García Márquez story – which turned out to be that same one. We did it as a site-specific show in 2005.

Emma Rice (actor, co-artistic director): I remember driving round Cornwall in a van, crying with laughter, during a village-hall tour of Wolf which combined fairytales that had wolves in them. It was the perfect clowning show. Three of us did it and we’d constantly be almost corpsing – that beautiful sweet spot where the audience and performers are on the edge of chaos.

MS: Emma believes that stories find you. When she came into the company, Bill and I thought: “My god she’s brilliant!” We ask what she wants to direct and she blurts out The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen without knowing why. We did it in 2000 and learned clog-dancing for it. The first thing we did was come out and watch the audience while washing our feet. Then we’d put on the clogs. We got invited to the Monaco dance festival. Prince Rainier’s daughter booked a private performance for them. Akram Khan admired the way we’d “deconstructed” the dance. Emma said: “They’re just doing the best they can!” We travelled the world with The Red Shoes. Performing in Syria and Lebanon with local actors was a genuine cultural exchange. More and more people came to see it in Beijing and the run was stopped – it was deemed too controversial. That made me realise why I do theatre. It had purpose rather than trying to impress.

ER: Bill suggested I do Tristan and Yseult. I had no interest in knights and dragons but we were going to rehearse for four weeks and run for four weeks at Restormel Castle. I thought: “I’ll get some friends together.” We wasted the first week of rehearsals improvising about a chorus of Cornish saints. I went home and felt we’d got nothing. Then I was thinking about medieval chainmail and wondered: what if they wear balaclavas and they’re not bird-spotters but love-spotters? On the Monday I gave them balaclavas and binoculars and this world emerged of the lost and heartbroken. That’s Kneehigh. We made Tristan and Yseult in 2003 and performed it for over a decade. Each time it got richer. Every show we made was like renewing our vows. We were influenced by each other and our surroundings rather than by going to the theatre.

Vicki Mortimer (designer): The Red Shoes was the first Kneehigh show I saw. It knocked my socks off. I had quite a conventional theatre-making background; I hadn’t really done devised work. In 2008, we created Don John, a version of Don Giovanni. Emma thought the 1970s winter of discontent could be a moment exploited by this opportunist character. We positioned the story on the edge of an industrial wasteland, suggesting abandoned spaces where people feel vulnerable. I’d worked in theatre that pretended the audience wasn’t there; Kneehigh treated the audience as another surprise element. They were collaborative in a fluid way – we had porous roles. Their lack of defensiveness drew you in as a collaborator.

Audrey Brisson (actor): Enter their world and it feels like you can do anything. Suddenly you’ll be playing an instrument you’ve never played. We created The Wild Bride in 2011 among the sheep at Kneehigh’s barns on the south coast which is magical. They put you up in cottages and you eat together in the kitchen. Everything is done through play. I thought we’d been on tea break for an hour then realised we were working. With Stu Barker’s folk music I discovered a side to my voice I didn’t know because he trusted me. The Wild Bride is so dark – this poor young woman is sold to the devil by her father and has her hands chopped off. But she finds her voice. It is a dark tale with a beautiful silliness. Sometimes fairytales are too watered down for kids.

Sarah Wright (puppet maker): For The Wild Bride, Bill tasked me with making a child and deer that look like they’ve grown in the forest and just walked off from their roots. There’s something elemental in their work, down to the materials we used. Even when Kneehigh do shows indoors they have that sense of the weather. And a beautiful simplicity. Hansel and Gretel, from 2009, became a story about home and security. The fairytale had always seemed bizarre to me – why would you abandon your children like that? This family was shown to love each other, then the wind blows, we see fat chickens become skinny and we know they have lost their income. It suggested why children might be sent into the unknown. And there was a fantastic knock-on-effect machine built by Rob Higgs: it had a ball roll down a plank, hit an oil lamp and set a rope alight. A sharp axe fell and a lobster pot swung from the tree, knocking out Carl’s hairy-chested witch in a negligee.

CG: In 2014, Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) was a kind of political satire we hadn’t done before. It was our version of The Beggar’s Opera, which composer Charles Hazlewood knew inside out. He thought we could capture the grungy spirit of injustice in John Gay’s proto-jukebox musical. Usually I’d be writing a few weeks before rehearsals; Dead Dog took two years. It’s got 40 or 50 songs. We made it at Liverpool’s Everyman and poured our fears and anger at the world into it – even before Brexit and Trump. There was a feeling we were sliding towards apocalypse. Then I suggested we adapt The Tin Drum, about the rise of fascism. I imagined it as a warning. By 2017, that had happened – it became a sort of documentary.

Rosanna Vize (designer): In sixth form our drama teacher took us to Nights at the Circus. It felt euphoric. Actors were in the bar putting on their makeup. Later they invited me to do a community production of Noye’s Fludde. They took a punt on me, having just met me. There’s no room to get bogged down in self-aware seriousness at the barns. It’s the most idyllic version of making theatre. For Fup, in 2018, we created a flat house to fall down like in a Buster Keaton film. We thought we were suggesting something too expensive and complicated. But Mike went: “Simple, it’s just hinges!” They have the “Yes, and …” attitude from improv. Working with Kneehigh is like running away with the circus.

CG: It’s been an amazing 40 years – all the people we took on a journey. We’ve quit while we’re ahead and laid the name to rest, but we’re looking forward to seeing what comes next.

MS: It’s a positive thing to press the reset button. We are drawing a line, celebrating Kneehigh – and opening up new horizons.

• The National Youth Theatre’s Animal Farm, presented in association with Mike Shepherd, is at Soulton Hall, Shropshire, 16-19 June. Carl Grose has written a new short film directed by Joe Wright. Emma Rice directs Bagdad Cafe at the Old Vic, London, 17 July-21 August and Wuthering Heights, which is designed by Vicki Mortimer, on tour from 11 October. Audrey Brisson stars in Amélie at the Criterion, London, until 25 September. Sarah Wright runs the Curious School of Puppetry. Rosanna Vize’s upcoming productions include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Curve, Leicester, 3-18 September.