INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Flip Flop Theatre Collective, on Progress, Power, and the Price of Being Alive

Today we’re joined by the team behind Flip Flop Theatre Collective, bringing their show STUD to Voila! Theatre Festival in London later this month. The piece is described as a chilling reflection on progress, power, and the price of being alive – following an eponymous facility where devotion to the ominous ‘Administration’ is absolute and your productivity defines your worth. We caught up with writer-directors Lokky Lau, Samantha Lentocha and Nathaniel Flynn-Murphy to unpack what audiences can expect from the show.

You can catch STUD as part of Voila! Theatre Festival in London at Theatro Technis on Monday 17th November from 9pm (60mins). Tickets (£15 / £10 conc.) are available through the Voila! Theatre Festival Online Box Office.

Jake: Hi team, you describe STUD as a reflection on progress, power, and the price of being alive – tell us more about that and what inspired the piece.

Lokky: Our piece is inspired by ourselves, our genders, cultures, and perspectives. Our group includes three male-identifying and one female-identifying member, with collaborators from the US, UK, Hong Kong, and India. We value the opportunity to create together, celebrating our differences and the harmony we discover in our process. After extensive discussion, we decided to set our play in a dystopic matriarchy: a society where racial diversity is the norm, yet gender inequality is stark, and only a small number of fertile men remain due to a bio-conflict.

Sammie: Throughout the development of STUD, we drew inspiration from dystopic works such as 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Severance. We wanted to flip the narrative: in our world, women wield inherent power as the bearers of life, and being a Mother is revered. Yet this society is neither celebratory nor just, it is rigid, controlled, distant, and uncomfortably familiar. At its core, STUD examines Lord Acton’s proverb, ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ exploring human cost in the name of progress.

Jake: How has the creative process been of putting the show together – give us an idea of the journey you’ve been on with it so far.

Nate: Our journey with STUD began in October 2024, during our Master’s in Professional Acting at Drama Studio London, as part of our Creative Project module. We started with theatre games and improvisation, which helped us connect creatively and generate initial ideas. From there, we developed scene concepts and embraced a collaborative ‘divide and conquer’ approach to writing, regularly coming together to combine, refine, and organise our work. After our first work-in-progress sharing in May 2025, the piece was widely praised for its originality, inspiring us to take it further. We applied to the Voila! Theatre Festival, happening in November, which gives us the opportunity to continue developing the piece post-graduation and incorporate audience feedback. Since then, we’ve fully rewritten the script and we’re excited to share this heightened, more polished version with a wider audience.

Jake: What will be the first thing the audience sees, feels, and hears as they enter the space?

Lokky: As the audience enters, they will see three men in uniformed white dresses and scrub caps, working with meticulous, almost ritualistic precision. A black table and a stainless-steel trolley display neatly arranged muffins and specimen jars, reinforcing a sense of order and control. An unsettling silence hangs in the air, evoking a dystopic, clinical regime that is both intriguing and unnerving.

Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Nate: We hope the audience will be prompted to reflect on the society we live in today and the structures of power that shapes it. Our aim is to spark dialogue and encourage deeper thought about how power influences relationships, communities, and individuals.

Jake: With Voila Festival 2025 just around the corner, what are you most excited for?

Sammie: We’ve been developing STUD for over a year, and we’re absolutely thrilled to share it with a new audience and see the conversation it sparks.

Lokky: We’re also excited to experience the variety of shows at the festival and be part of a very supportive community. Voila! has offered us guidance and workshops in theatre-making, and we’re learning a lot from this experience as we prepare to present our first piece of theatre in the UK post-graduation.

Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?

Lokky: It would be a cocoa banana protein shake! STUD is a mix of food and science, packed with protein and shaking indulgent cocoa up with nourishing bananas! Bottoms up!

A reminder, you can catch STUD as part of Voila! Theatre Festival in London at Theatro Technis on Monday 17th November from 9pm (60mins). Tickets (£15 / £10 conc.) are available through the Voila! Theatre Festival Online Box Office.