Interview with Frantic Assembly: Beautiful Burnout and training the performer

Boxing is one of the very few sports in which the aim is to inflict injury on your opponent to the extent that they are unable to continue with the contest. It is a sport of violence, danger, and endurance. In 2010, the physical theatre company Frantic Assembly, in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, began a training process to prepare for the creation and rehearsal of their production of Beautiful Burnout by Bryony Lavery, a play about a group of young people training in a boxing gym in Scotland. In an interview in June 2011, the co-founders of Frantic Assembly and co-directors of the production, Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, talked about what drew them to this project; about what they learned about physical training, combat and performance within the boxing world; and about how the experience has changed and developed their own approach to training and performance. This article presents key extracts from the interview alongside a critical reflection on the issues that are raised. Publisher statement: "This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training in, 2012, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/19443927.2012.688854."