Stendhal's 
'The Red and the Black'

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Mansfield College, Oxford, 2011

Produced by Ionian Productions and directed by Julia Hartley, Stendhal's The Red and the Black marks Ba-Laylah founder Tara Isabella Burton's first script commissioned for an external company. 

Narrated by flamboyant, puckish, author-puppeteer, Stendhal, The Red and the Black tells the story of idealistic young Julien Sorel, who longs to live a brave and poetic life as inspired by his idol, Napoleon. But as he rises in the ranks of French society, bedding beautiful women and masking his indiscretions with hypocrisy, he learns that artifice is the name of the game. Quoting literary phrases and adopting the feats of Byron and Napoleon as his own, Julien is poised to conquer all of Paris...until he meets a woman as single-minded as he is.

Soon, Stendhal begins to lose control of his characters, the lines between illusion and reality begin to slowly dissolve...

"So let us sit down, relax, and enjoy this entertaining story of a society crumbling apart. Yes, Mesdames et messieurs, you have been served a deliciously shaken and stirred Stendhal's finest, and you won't look at the French novel lying in your dusty bookshelf with the same eyes again"-Fiamma Alemanni, The Cherwell

There's Only One Lord Byron

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Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Royal College of Surgeons, 2010

Written and directed by Tara Isabella Burton.

April 1824: the news of Lord Byron’s death in Greece has been greatly exaggerated. He returns to his old haunt – a London brothel, beginning a series of encounters with its five courtesans, each of whom reminds him of a woman from his past...

Three Sisters

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Hertford College, Oxford, 2010

Directed by Tara Isabella Burton

An innovative promenade staging of Chekhov's tragedy of domestic despair, Three Sisters invites you to enter the Prosorov household - a voyeuristic fly on the wall witnessing the collapse of one family's dreams.