An in-the-round production at the Royal Albert Hall in London features more than 100 performers – including 60 dancing swans. Tristram Kenton went into the rehearsals

Behind the painted curtains of BRB’s The Sleeping Beauty lies a universe teeming with whimsy, dedication and a dash of eccentricity

As I step through the stage door, Tom Rogers, a former soloist turned creative digital producer, becomes my guide through this theatrical labyrinth.

“This half is like where we live, and the other half is the theatre,” Rogers says, a grin lighting up his face as we navigate the corridors, which start to feel like a maze. “Try and remember this bit of the journey in case you need to come back to the office.”

All of a dancer’s possessions are stored in a single box on tour

The case of a German ballet director who attacked a critic with faeces has loosely inspired a satire about the relationships between creators and critics

Among the spikier offerings at this year’s Theatertreffen, the annual festival of drama in Berlin, is a play whose dramatis personae may ring familiar. There is an angry ballet director, a female reviewer who gives his show a critical mauling and an adjacent dachshund. Their paths converge in the same lurid way as happened in real life last year, when the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, Marco Goecke, attacked dance critic Wiebke Hüster with dog excrement in response to a negative review.

Die Hundekot-Attacke (“the dog poop attack”) is conceived by Dutch company Wunderbaum and devised by an actors’ collective from Jena. The play has a plot that features a group of actors from Jena devising a provocative play based on a real-life hundekot-attacke, in a desperate bid to draw critics to their provincial theatre – a big idea from a small-town ensemble.