Student Shannon Theumer interviews award-winning Playwright and Director Florian Zeller

In June, Central student Shannon Theumer took part in a unique interview with the award-winning French novelist, playwright and director Florian Zeller as a part of the press junket for his BAFTA and Academy Award-winning film The Father. 

Hailed by The Times as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, Florian Zeller has written more than ten plays including The Mother, The Truth, The Lie, The Height of the Storm, The Son, and The Father, which was described by the Guardian as ‘the most acclaimed new play of the last decade’ and which was ultimately adapted for the film.  Florian Zeller’s plays have been staged in more than 45 countries and have won numerous awards.  The Father marks his first film as a Director and Co-Writer, together with Christopher Hampton, and features a star-studded cast including Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots and Central alumnus Rufus Sewell. 

During the interview, Shannon was able to discuss Florian Zeller’s writing process with him firsthand, including the work that was undertaken to adapt his acclaimed play for film. 

Shannon is a student on Central’s BA Writing for Performance course, which develops students’ skills for writing for performance practices and encourages them to create new work and explore innovative forms of writing for solo performance, verbatim theatre and devised theatre.  The course explores a broad curriculum that is centred around socially engaged performance practices and the dramaturgical skills of writing, and students work closely with the BA Drama, Applied Theatre and Education and BA Performance Arts programmes, offering a vibrant meshing of writing and live performance art.   

Writing for Performance students also work with a variety of high-profile writers, arts practitioners and directors and encounter a diverse range of innovative performance practices that use writing for performance in different ways. 

Read Shannon Theumer’s blog piece for the Central website, in which she disusses her interview with Florian Zeller and reviews the film, The Father.   

If you want to keep up with Shannon, you can follow her on Instagram @ceremonialsinmylungs or Twitter, @ShannonTheumer. 

Don’t miss Florian Zeller’s award-winning film The Father, which is playing in cinemas and on demand from 11 June 2021.