Adapted for the stage by Neil Duffield Music by John Foxx and Benge Directed by Juliet Forster THE AUTHOR THE STORY

E. M. Forster was born in London on 1 January 1879. He First published in 1909, The Machine Stops is set in a post- studied Classics and History at King’s College, Cambridge, during apocalyptic world where humans live beneath the surface which time he began writing fiction and became a member of a of the earth. The short story explores the human need for discussion society known as the Apostles, many of whom went communication, connection and the obstacles that inhibit on to be part of the influential group of writers, intellectuals, it, namely technology. In this subterranean world, each and philosophers known as the Bloomsbury Group. person exists within their own individual cell and humanity is dependent on the Machine, a After university he travelled around Europe with technological provider of everybody’s his mother, which provided inspiration perceived needs. Travel is no longer necessary or desired for some of his novels, including A Room and all contact is made through Skype-like video calls. with a View (1908). He is best known This story, written over a century ago, is for his novels, including Howards End (1910) astoundingly poignant for us in 2016: it is a and A Passage to India (1924), but chilling prediction and exploration of he was also skilled essayist, literary our increasingly complex relationship critic, travel writer and short story with technology. It focuses on themes such as humankind’s writer. Much of his work dealt with the impact of class dependence on technology and the consequences of active difference and societal structures; through these themes he counter culture, as well as isolation, totalitarianism, the struggle was able to explore the need for humans to form meaningful for freedom and loss of identity. One of the protagonists, connections with each other and the barriers that prevent them Kuno, alone questions their now total dependency on technology from doing so. to live and communicate with each other, but in his struggle Forster self-identified as a humanist and was President of to break out can he reach the Earth’s surface before the the Cambridge Humanists from 1959 until his death, as well Machine stops? as being Vice-President of the Ethical Union in the 1950s. Forster wrote: “The humanist has four leading characteristics – curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.” Later, he was made a fellow at the University of Cambridge and in 1945 he moved to Cambridge permanently, Photo by Ben Pugh living there until his death in 1970. INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR, JULIET FORSTER INTERVIEW WITH THE DESIGNER, RHYS JARMAN

Why did you want to direct this piece? everybody lives under the earth’s surface, but at the same time How did you become a designer? out what they’re inspired by, and finding visual languages for we visit other locations: we go up in an airship at one point, and those things to represent on stage. It’s really a way of creating I first read the story in 1998 and it immediately captured my I always liked doing art in school. I did a foundation in art at another we go to a room on the other side of the world. So I our own world – that’s been one of the biggest challenges of it. imagination. At the time lots of people were talking about the and design which I loved, and I still didn’t know what I Creating the language in which to tell this piece takes quite a millennium bug: there was an anxiety that once we reached think being able to make all that workable is a big challenge. wanted to do. I liked doing everything – drawing, sculpting, long time. And so you try things and they fail, and you try other 2000 all the machines would reset, nothing would work What new insights do you think this stage taking photographs, everything – so theatre seemed like this things and those things sometimes fail but then some things will anymore, there would be a huge apocalypse and everything adaptation offers? opportunity to use all of those different practices in one kind of be successful – it’s those successful things that you take further, would go horribly wrong. As we’ve developed into the future that I think because we’re developing a physical manifestation of discipline, really. So I think that’s why I do it: because it gives and eventually you start piecing this puzzle together. I think it we have now, we’ve become so much more reliant on technology me this platform to create stuff, where you can use a whole the Machine that is played by humans, you get a much clearer will probably still change as well, but for the most part I think – it’s in everyone’s homes, and there’s a sense that we’re range of skills, and you can be pretty wild with what you create, sense of how much of our natural self as humans has been we’ve landed on a world for our show. both connected to and isolated from each other through the compressed into the walls of this machine, into the workings and stuff that you really would have the chance to I think if you were increasing use of technology. And that means the story becomes Were there any particular aspects to this story just a fun artist. the mechanisms that actually separate us from each other. And that inspired you? more and more interesting. I think you’ll identify quite strongly with the character of Kuno, How did you come up with the design for The From the first time I read it I thought it was really interesting. How did you start the process of putting this short the one who tries to break out of it all. Machine Stops? story on stage? When I look at my portfolio from the last eight years, I see that In directing a piece like this, what type of Designing for theatres can be a lengthy process – especially a lot of my work is quite conceptual – it’s quite weird, it’s not I decided to work with the playwright Neil Duffield, who I’ve approach do you take in rehearsals? with a play like this, because it’s set in a fictionalised place, so necessarily that clear, it’s quite ambiguous stuff! I do a lot of worked with a lot before – I knew that he’d come up with an you don’t really have the anchor of being able to look up on the work with physical theatre that’s becoming dance, so there are interesting approach and respect Forster’s voice. The form of Because it’s such a physical piece, a lot of it has been working internet the place it’s set to see exactly how it looks. This process a lot of worlds that are created and suggested but they’re not the piece was something we jointly found. Although there are on movement. It’s easy to become a bit stereotypical with is much more about taking elements of the piece and finding necessarily prescribed as you would in a normal play. only really two characters in the story – Vashti and her son mechanical movements, but what I’m interested in drawing on is Kuno – the character and dominance of the Machine means that the movement language of insects and the idea of being under it’s something that needs to be given its own manifestation on the earth, and using that language to inform how the actors stage. It was a process of working out how we would put all of behave and how they move. I like actors to be playful, to try that together and make it work in the right form. things on-stage and to explore how we make that world happen.

And what do you think the biggest challenge of So there’s been a lot of experimenting, building, and getting our the play is? heads right into that world. For the humans in the piece, we’re Probably trying to create such an enormously different world. We asking: what’s it like if you’re that isolated – if you’re on your have to completely transport our audience to this world, where own all the time, what then does direct contact mean? Photo by Ben Pugh Caroline Gruber Trained at the Royal Central School of Speech And Drama. Vashti Theatre credits include: Abandonment (York Theatre Royal); Two Thousand Years (Royal National Theatre); Six Degrees of Separation (The Royal Exchange); Love Me Slender (New Vic Theatre); What Every Woman Knows (Watermill Theatre, Newbury); Nice Dorothy, The Return of the Prodigal, The Artifice, Penny for a Song, The Dutch Courtesan, His Majesty, Cat with Green Violin and Play With Repeats (Orange Tree CAST Theatre); The Corn Is Green (Greenwich Theatre); Steaming (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry); Milk and Honey (Manchester Library Theatre); The Clandestine Marriage (Compass and tour); and seasons at the Pitlochry Vashti Caroline Gruber Festival and Chester Gateway. Kuno Karl Queensborough Television credits include: Einstein and Eddington, My Dad’s the Prime Minister, Bottom, Rory Bremner (Who Machine / Attendant Maria Gray Else?), Stick With Me Kid, Harry Enfield’s Television Programme, TV Squash, The Bill, Grange Hill, Heil Honey I’m Home, Who Dares Wins, Minder, Sorrel and Son, The Upper Hand and Up Yer News. Machine / Passenger Gareth Aled Film credits include: Too Many Gods and Breakpoint. For radio she has been a member of the BBC Radio The Friends’ Voices Kelvin Goodspeed and Edith Kirkwood Drama Company. She also co-wrote and performed in a three-woman sketch show at the Edinburgh Fringe and Battersea Arts Centre.

CREATIVE TEAM Karl Graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech And Drama in 2015, during which year he was also the BBC Writer Neil Duffield Queensborough Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award runner-up. Director Juliet Forster Kuno Theatre credits include: Only the Brave (The Musical) (Soho Theatre/Wales Millennium Centre); A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes (Tricycle Theatre); Morning (Lyric Hammersmith and The Traverse Theatre); Dayglo and Designer Rhys Jarman Mind the Gap (Y Touring Theatre); Ignition Out Of Reach (Frantic Assembly); The First Thing That Ever Ever Composers John Foxx and Benge Happened (Peepolykus); Depth Charge (Gecko); Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith); Concealed (Accidental LX Designer Tom Smith Festival); and Push (New Diorama Theatre). TV and radio credits include: Casualty (BBC) and Black Dog (BBC Radio 4). Movement Director Philippa Vafadari

Maria Gray Trained at East 15 Drama School and Flic Circus School in Turin, Italy. PRODUCTION TEAM Machine / Theatre credits include: Romeo and Juliet (Orange Tree Theatre); Full Stop (Scribbled Thought/Light the Fuse); Production Manager Ben Pugh Attendant The Little Red Hen (Salisbury Playhouse and Manchester Waterside Theatre with Stuff and Nonsense); The Master and Margarita (Fragments International Ensemble); Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Mark and the Marked Head of Wardrobe Hazel Jupp and The Passenger (Box Clever Theatre Company); The Girl Next Door (Action Theatre); and Motor Mouth (solo Deputy Stage Manager Clare Morse show at the European Tour of Outdoor Festivals). Company Manager on Tour Luke James Television and film credits include:O2 Commercial, directed by Rocky Morton, and Irreparable, a short film directed by Martin Gooch. Projection Artist James Islip

Casting/YTR Administrator Katy Nelson Gareth Aled Theatre credits include: The Magic Flute (Complicité/English National Opera); {150} (National Theatre Wales/ Pilot Theatre Producer Mandy Smith Machine / Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru), War Horse (National Theatre), Branches (National Theatre Wales); and The Heart Passenger of Robin Hood (Royal Shakespeare Company). Pilot Theatre Administrator Sarah Rorke Television and film credits include:Miliband of Brothers (Channel 4); War Horse (NT Live); and Harrigan (Tall Pilot Theatre Project & Development Coordinator Lucy Hammond Tree Productions). Radio credits include: Boom Boom, True To My Land (BBC).

The Machine Stops is a co-production by York Theatre Royal and Pilot Theatre. Our special thanks go to: Duncan Clarke PR, Ben Bentley, Paul D, Ben Franks and Project M. The Pastoral Symphony, View, Five Princes and a Wedding, Harmonic, releasing Codex in 2015. John and Benge met up Series 5 of Doctor Who (BBC); and Young, Autistic and NEIL DUFFIELD Juno’s Swans, and The Gloop Monster. again at the end of 2015 to work on the score for The Machine Stagestruck (Channel 4). Stops, creating a richly textured soundtrack for the new theatre Writer production. The music also features a vocal by Elizabeth Bernholz, JOHN FOXX AND BENGE better known as Gazelle Twin, who worked with Benge on her own TOM SMITH Neil has worked as a full-time professional playwright for groundbreaking 2014 album UNFLESH. over thirty years and has written more than sixty plays and Music Lighting Designer adaptations which have been staged extensively in theatres In addition to The Machine Stops, both John Foxx and Benge throughout Britain and abroad. In 2006 his play The Lost Founder and original lead singer of Ultravox, John Foxx has have a busy year ahead including a new Foxx compilation 21st Tom is Assistant Electrician at York Theatre Royal where he has Warrior won the Arts Council England Children’s Award ‘for enjoyed a remarkable musical career stretching from work with Century: A Man, A Woman and a City which features two worked as Stage Electrician on The Railway Children, In Fog and work which displays excellence, inspiration and innovation in Brian Eno and German producer Conny Plank in the 1970s to brand new tracks by John Foxx and the Maths, as well as a Falling Snow and the annual pantomime. Lighting Design credits children’s theatre’. He lives in Bolton and enjoys spending as albums with ambient pioneer Harold Budd in the 1990s and new Maths collaboration with long-time Foxx/Ultravox fan Gary for York Theatre Royal include The Circle of Chalk and Mr Puntila much time as possible with his four young grandchildren. more recent collaborations with an array of contemporary artists Numan. Meanwhile Benge has recently finished working on a and his Man Matti. including Gazelle Twin, Matthew Dear, Hannah Peel and the Ghost new album by Wrangler (of which he is a member), which is Box label. due for release in September 2016. Tom trained in Stage Management and Technical Theatre at LAMDA. JULIET FORSTER Credits while training include Lighting Design for Fight Night ’14 John Foxx left Ultravox in 1979 to pursue an underground career, and Sound Design for On the Razzle and I Caught Crabs in starting with his hugely influential albumMetamatic . He has Director RHYS JARMAN Walberswick. Other Lighting Design credits include Alexandria released more than 30 albums over the last 35 years, many of (The Yard Theatre) and Bat Boy (C-1, Edinburgh ’12). Juliet is Associate Director of York Theatre Royal. Her directing them signposts for future directions and possibilities in music. Designer credits include: In Fog and Falling Snow, Betrayal, A Number, With regular forays into experimental film and cinema and gallery See How They Run, Morgana le Fey, Angels & Insects, exhibitions as a visual artist in New York and London, Foxx has Rhys was one of the winners of the 2007 Linbury Biennial Prize for Escaping Alice, Blue/Orange, Two Planks and a Passion, worked from an extensive creative palette. his designs of Varjak Paw (The Opera Group). New work includes PHILIPPA VAFADARI The Crucible, Oleanna, Twelfth Night, Rupert Brooke, In 2009 John and Benge started working together. Calling The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Northern Stage); The Time of Movement Director Beyond Measure, The Journey, Whatever Next and Rabbit themselves John Foxx and the Maths, they released three critically Your Life (Gecko and BBC co-production); Hurling Rubble at and Hedgehog, as well as The Trumpeter’s Tale, The the Sun and Hurling Rubble at the Moon (Park Theatre). Rhys acclaimed albums – Interplay, The Shape of Things and Philippa has been Movement Director for a number of theatre Photographer’s Portrait, The Shopkeepers Story and Tales has also designed Institute and Missing (Gecko) and is currently Evidence – which put them at the cutting edge of modular- companies including Boilerhouse Theatre Co, V.amp Productions From Camelot for touring into schools, Ten Plagues, The Insect working on two new shows for 2016 and 2017. based music. The duo then teamed up with classically trained and Communicado. Philippa formed BandBazi (Circus Theatre Play and The Tempest and Other Tales of the Sea with the violinist Diana Yukawa to create a fresh identity as Ghost Recent theatre work includes The Nutcracker (Nuffield Company) in 2001. The company specialises in fusing aerial York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre, and Henry IV and Tales from Theatre), Holes and Threeway, directed by Phillip Breen. circus with theatre. For BandBazi, her work as choreographer Kafka with Out of Character Theatre Company. Outdoor work includes Collective Endeavour, Burntwater and performer includes Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus (UK Other directing credits include: The Tempest (Winchester and One Million (Tangled Feet and The Greenwich and Docklands and Germany), Suzy=Soraya, Nearly Mine, The Persian Theatre Royal); The Devil at Coventry, Alien Invasion, International Festival). Recent work for opera includes Adriano in Cinderella (UK tour), Love Indeed (UK tour) and Mind Five Princes and a Wedding and View, based on Arthur Syria (The Classical Opera Company); The Fairy Queen (Temple Walking (UK and Indian tour). Philippa played Audrey Hepburn Miller’s A View from a Bridge (Belgrade Theatre). For the Music Foundation); Hot House (Royal Opera House Education, and Holly in BandBazi’s Breakfast at Audrey’s, which won an Royal Shakespeare Company, she has directed young people’s main stage); and The Barber of Seville (ETO). Other work for Edinburgh Fringe First for new writing in 2005. productions based on The Tempest, Comedy of Errors, theatre includes Diary of a Nobody (Royal & Derngate Theatre); She is currently in development for Hamlet Asylum Seeker Much Ado About Nothing and Henry IV, Part One, as well Money The Game Show, Mission to Mars and The Moon, in association with Talawa Theatre Co. In 2016/17 she will be as regularly leading teacher training sessions on practical the Moon (Unlimited Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Night Light researching a new piece of theatre in Iran collaborating with approaches to Shakespeare. Theatre); Time for the Good-looking Boy and A Christmas Don Quixote theatre company, funded by the British Council. Carol with Iqbal Khan. Writing credits include several adaptations of Shakespeare’s Philippa has previously choreographed for York Theatre Royal’s plays, including Pilot Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as Designs for television include set designs for Alice in production of King Arthur (2013) and its co-production of Angels & Insects, Tales from Kafka, Torch, Tomorrow’s World, Photo by Ben Pugh Wonderland, Peter Pan and A Christmas Carol (CBeebies); Brideshead Revisited with English Touring Theatre (2016).