What I’m Here For.
Vanishing Point / Teater Katapult
What I’m Here For.
Staged and Directed by Matthew Lenton
Text by Josephine Eusebius
Set & Costume Design by Mai Katsume
Lighting Design by Simon Wilkinson
Sound Design & Composition by Mark Melville
Dramaturgy by Rikke Frigast Jakobsen
Associate Director Ben Standish
Creative Associate Elicia Daly
BSL Interpreters Karen Forbes & Rebecca Goodall
English to Danish Text Translation / Oversættelse engelsk til dansk Mia Dinitzen
Cast: Mia Dinitzen, Lærke Schjærff Engelbrecht, Aisha Goodman, Aisha Lawal, Charlotte Trier.
When snow falls, flowers bloom.
Flora stands on the hospital roof, smoking. The snow falls. Her shift is over, but it won’t let her go. In fragments, she relives her overly long night shift on a chronically understaffed ward. Memories are unclear. Situations blur together. Faces and voices appear and disappear. She remembers lying so convincingly that she became afraid of herself. Flora holds other people’s lives in her hands, yet she is simultaneously caught between her own good intentions and the pressured healthcare system.
On this fateful night shift, the pressure becomes too much. Patients, relatives, doctors, receptionists and porters pull at her from all sides. Flora lets go, as responsibility, her own self-image and human lives slip from her grasp.
With bold theatrical innovation and immersive world-building typical of Vanishing Point and Teater Katapult (Denmark), What I’m Here For (Danish title Flora) is a fast-moving fusion of new European writing and visual imagination, which explores the tragi-comic collateral of hospitals and human choices.
Multilingual, with surtitles integrated into the design, What I’m Here For is an international collaboration created by the teams that brought you Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and The Insider.
“★★★★★★ Five sublime performances... Josephine Eusebius’s text jumps in time and perspective in an almost cinematic manner, which director Matthew Lenton orchestrates wonderfully… Art increasingly reflects itself more than the society that surrounds it. But every now and then, the two go hand in hand.”
“★★★★★★ Excellent”
“★★★★★ A socially critical production worthy of five stars”
“★★★★★ ‘Excellent. Lærke Schjærff Engelbrecht’s portrayal of Flora is superbly complemented by the rest of the cast, as well as the set design, lighting and sound.’”
“★★★★★ A remarkable theatrical collaboration... a slow burning tone poem full of light and shade that is as damning as it is devastating.”
“★★★★ Life-and-death choices are taken to gothic heights in this intense, atmospheric high-precision production”
“★★★★ A theatrical experience that is arresting, incisive and utterly uncompromising in its aesthetical ambition…A triumph of craft, vision and art”
“ ★★★★★ The whole experience is of such perfectly-shaped intensity that it seems to come and go in a moment, leaving the audience almost breathless, as they begin to absorb its impact.”
“Is this hospital drama the must‑see theatre event of the year? ... A profoundly moving, deeply humane, marvellously acted piece of storytelling.”
“★★★★ Collaboration across borders, languages and cultures can foster some of the most exciting artistic innovations. While accessing international theatre outside of festivals such as the Edinburgh Fringe is becoming an increasingly rare feat for Scottish audiences, there are companies that have long been rallying against this in their choice to place internationalism at the core of their values.
Glasgow’s Vanishing Point has made this a clear mission statement in its 20-plus-year history – and as its latest co-production emphasises, there can be immense power in the bringing together of disparate voices for the exploration of universal themes. ”
2026 TOUR
Teater Katapult // Black Box, Aarhus, DENMARK
4 - 21 MARCH
Tron Theatre, Glasgow, SCOTLAND
1 - 4 APRIL
Dundee Rep Theatre, SCOTLAND
9 - 11 APRIL
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, SCOTLAND
15 - 18 APRIL
Photography by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Photography by Jacob Stage.
