THE SMASH HIT COMEDY

BY Sam Holcroft DIRECTED BY SIMON GODWIN

Autumn 2017 Touring to: Colchester, Harrogate, Cheltenham, Doncaster, Bristol, Exeter. Oldham, Poole, Huddersfield, Guildford ett.org.uk ett.org.uk WELCOME

It is a joy to be touring this deliriously funny comedy by Sam Holcroft, with acclaimed director Simon Godwin making his English Touring debut. Rules for Living explores the coping mechanisms of one explosive family in the face of the obligatory rituals of Christmas day.

The result is a virtuosic display of theatricality and raucous humour. Sam and Simon have conjured a world that is instantly recognisable, laying bare the conventions and anxieties of contemporary life. Amidst the chaos that ensues, we may be reminded of our own families at Christmas.

It’s been a pleasure to partner with Royal & Derngate and Rose Theatre, Kingston once again after receiving the 2016 UK Theatre Award for Best Touring Production for The Herbal Bed. We are all proud and excited to share the regional premiere of this wonderful play with audiences across the country as it tours the UK this autumn.

You can keep up to date with the tour @ETTtweet #RulesForLiving.

I hope you enjoy the show.

Richard Twyman Artistic Director,

Rules For Living is a co-production with Royal & Derngate, Northampton and , and will open at Royal & Derngate, Northampton (8 – 30 Sep) before touring to Cambridge (3 – 7 Oct), Theatre Royal Windsor (10 – 14 Oct), Theatre Royal Brighton (17 – 21 Oct), New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (31 Oct – 4 Nov), and Rose Theatre Kingston (7 – 18 Nov).

Photo: Mark Douet /English Touring Theatre @ETTtweet 1 IN CONVERSATION WITH SAM HOLCROFT AND SIMON GODWIN

“I feel increasingly like a clockmaker trying to get all the cogs turning in the right direction.”

Playwright Sam Holcroft and director Simon Godwin talk to Nick Smurthwaite about this revival of Rules of Living, which was first produced at the National Theatre in 2015.

Nick: How does this production differ from the original production at the National? Photo: Mark Douet

Simon: I didn’t see the National Theatre production so I came to it as a new play, without preconceptions, which was exciting because I always aspire to direct any play as if for the first time. We’re veering towards a more naturalistic interpretation so rather than the rules for living dictating Nick: How did you arrive at the play’s very distinctive structure? the overall aesthetic, it’s more located in a recognisable family home. We’re showing the workings of the household rather than placing it in a game show wherein sits a family. For me, one of the great Sam: I planned the characters’ core goals and story arcs without any reference to the rules at all, pleasures of the play is its universality in the sense that this is a play about a family – and we’ve all then began layering the rules in stage by stage. I wanted to make sure the characters’ behaviour got families – and it is set over Christmas. The thing about Christmas and families is that they are was rooted in real emotional impulses – rather than being pushed around by the rules. joined at the hip yet strangely adversarial. We are at our most flammable when we are trying to be Nick: Have you enjoyed working together? at our most jolly. So this is clearly a great crucible for drama. Simon: I’ve worked at the Royal Court where there was a well-established ethos of the writer being a Sam: Second time round, I have a much clearer idea of what the play is. The first time you do any primary part of the process, and I’ve also worked at the RSC and the National, where quite often the new play nobody really knows what it is until it opens. You might think you’ve written a comedy and writers were not around anymore and therefore unable to make a contribution. So it’s very nice to be it turns out to be something else, or you think you’ve written something dramatic and profound and able to talk to Sam about what she feels and what she wants. Lastly there is also something relaxing everybody laughs. There is a lot of risk involved, and risk makes everyone frightened. about not doing the first production of a new play because that can sometimes be fraught and highly Nick: What was the original inspiration for the play? charged. You don’t want to mess it up.

Sam: Several things. I was in therapy myself and I wanted to investigate why I found it helpful Nick: After working on the original production with Marianne Elliott, were you happy to see through writing a play about it. One of the concepts at the heart of CBT (cognitive behavioural another director come in and reinvent it? therapy) is about tackling low esteem by inventing “rules for living” to help you cope with that. Sam: I profoundly believe that when you write a play and hand it over to the director, you give it Initially I thought it might be a serious play, but then I realised that by setting it in a family context away. If you don’t want to collaborate, go and write a novel. You have to be open to collaboration there were a lot of people with different rules and agendas, and that can produce a pressure and new choices if you’re writing drama. cooker situation in which the lid is likely to blow off. Rather unexpectedly I found I’d created the basis for a farce.

2 3 Nick: You studied to be a scientist. How come you finished up becoming a playwright?

Sam: I’d always loved the theatre from an early age but I also loved working quietly in science labs so I opted to read biology at university. I was doing my dissertation at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, spending my days in the lab pipetting cell cultures into dishes, and my evenings at the Bedlam student theatre, writing plays and painting sets. I took a year out from my studies to decide which road to take, and during that year I got my first commission from the Traverse and never looked back.

Nick: Do you think drama and science have a lot in common?

Sam: Science is every bit as creative as drama. You have to be very imaginative to be a good scientist. I like logic, I like structure, I like things to make sense. As a writer I feel increasingly like a clockmaker trying to get all the cogs turning in the right direction.

Nick: Some of the reviews for Rules for Living compared you to . Did that please you?

Sam: He is the master, so yes very much. I will never reach his level, but I can aspire to his mastery. Ayckbourn is a phenomenal craftsman, a great experimenter, and his plays are deeply moving, talk to you about the human condition at the same time as making you slap your thigh with laughter. That’s the holy grail – to write about things you feel are important, while at the same time entertaining your audience.

Nick: What happens when you disagree? Who has the upper hand?

Both: We haven’t disagreed so far.

Simon: I’ve recently been working in America and American actors are much more likely to say, “I don’t agree with that,” than British actors. Initially I found it very stressful because it was totally alien to me. I’d spent years avoiding conflict. But eventually I found it to be liberating because it was a quick way to find a resolution. So if push comes to shove….

© John Good

4 Photo: Mark Douet 5 WHY WE ALL NEED RULES FOR LIVING …OR THINK WE DO by Nick Smurthwaite

Rules for Living are the little subconscious props and strategies we all use to cope with everyday stuff, like how to deal with being stared at in public places, or how to manage an abusive family relationship or an awkward boss.

For the most part, our rules for living are private and unspoken, thought patterns we’ve been incubating since childhood. Some are useful and necessary, others make you feel bad about yourself.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, a talking therapy aimed at helping with a wide range of emotional, physical and psychological conditions, encourages you to face up to your personal rules for living in order to better understand how and why you react to particular situations in particular ways.

You might focus on what’s going on in your life right now, or you might take a long, hard look at your childhood and adolescence and explore how it affected the way you see the world as an adult.

A Negative Mind Set

Negative thinking often starts in childhood. For example, if you didn’t receive a lot of praise or positive feedback at school, it is quite likely you have got into the habit of thinking you were not clever or good enough.

Over time this negative frame of mind can become fixed in your adult thinking, affecting how you feel or behave at work and in the family environment, often a hothouse of pent-up resentments and frustrations.

In addition to depression and anxiety disorders CBT is used to help people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, chronic insomnia and alcoholism. It is based on the idea that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are all inter-connected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can prevent us from moving forward with confidence and optimism.

Nick Smurthwaite is a freelance journalist, who has been writing about the performing arts for a variety of national leading publications for more than 30 years.

© John Good

www.mind.org.uk

6 Photo: Mark Douet 7 for these playful, barbed comedies for the same reasons Tynan denounced the Loamshire play: the FORMICA AND DESPAIR perfect home and beaming family are a façade just begging to be ripped down or tugged at the seams. Sam Holcroft is no less ruthless in dismantling the picture of domestic happiness than any of the playwrights who have gone before her. Much like its predecessors, Rules for Living takes a facet A LOOK AT DOMESTIC COMEDY of family life and uses this as the basis for mischievous formal experimentation. Every family has its own unspoken rules, which if said aloud might speak volumes about the dynamics between its DRAMAS ON STAGE individual members. Holcroft takes that idea and applies it literally, using a formal device to dig by Catherine Love to the bottom of long-held secrets and simmering resentments. Holcroft’s play is, in some ways, a commentary on all those earlier bitter family farces. The entrances, In 1954, the Observer’s chief theatre critic Kenneth Tynan coined the concept of the ‘Loamshire play’. Plays exits and encounters of such dramas are all held together by meticulously crafted rules and patterns, in this mould – which for Tynan symbolised all that was wrong with British theatre in the early 1950s – were which structure the building turmoil. Ayckbourn has even talked about this kind of playwriting in typically set in country houses where ‘the sun invariably shines’ and the extremes of human emotion are terms of mechanical construction. By making these rules explicit, Holcroft offers a peek inside the reduced to ‘giggles and whimpers’. And the deadening effect of the Loamshire play extended to directors workings of her play. Rules for Living is both a critique of the tenets we use to try to perfect our lives and actors, argued Tynan. ‘After all,’ he reasoned, ‘how many ways are there of directing a tea party?’ – usually in vain – and a self-aware dissection of the conventions of dramatic confrontation.

While Tynan might have been right about the staid conventions of the time, which were challenged by various There’s also something about big family gatherings that immediately dials up the dramatic tension. theatrical experiments in the following decades, he was wrong about the limited theatrical potential of the tea It’s no accident that several of these plays, including Rules for Living, are set at Christmas. We like party. In the years since the Loamshire play was derided, successive generations of theatre-makers have found to think of it as the season of good cheer, but it’s also frequently the season of fraught reunions, plenty of room for innovation within the domestic spaces of middle-class kitchens, living rooms and dining rooms. drunken arguments and personal crises (as made abundantly clear in another Ayckbourn offering, the ironically titled Season’s Greetings). The setting might be similar to those of Tynan’s dreaded Rules for Living is just the latest in a genre of plays perhaps best exemplified by Alan Ayckbourn, the poet Loamshire plays, but there are no trifling ‘giggles and whimpers’ for these unfortunate characters. of Formica and despair. In the 1970s, Ayckbourn made a name for himself with shows that combined playful formal experiment with surgical dissections of the unhappy lives of middle-class married couples. Catherine Love is a freelance arts journalist, theatre critic and researcher who has written for publications such as TimeOut, In Absurd Person Singular, for example, he offered audiences a glimpse of three miserable Christmas WhatsOnStage & , amongst others. Eve parties from the perspective of the three hosts’ kitchens, while How the Other Half Loves put the overlapping living rooms of two couples – linked by a clandestine adulterous relationship – on the same stage. And perhaps most famously, The Norman Conquests trilogy followed six characters over one weekend, with each play taking place in a different part of the same house.

Experimentation of an altogether more unsettling kind can be found in the domestic spaces of ’s plays. An early script, Traps, opens on what looks like an ordinary household scene. Soon, though, the play becomes stranger and stranger, as conversations shift fluidly between past, present and future. In the first part of Churchill’s double billBlue Heart, meanwhile, a scene between a family gets rewinded, reset and replayed, allowing for multiple different iterations of the same scenario. As a young woman’s mother, father and aunt await her return from Australia, arguments break out, strange figures enter and implausible disruptions occur – all without any hint as to which course of events is the ‘real’ one.

More recently, a clutch of new plays has continued in this vein. Moira Buffini’sDinner took the cruelty and bleakness of the Ayckbourn-style dinner party to its grim apotheosis, in a play in which the twisted hostess serves her guests a series of increasingly outlandish dishes. similarly cracked open the now familiar dinner set-up in the first act ofIn the Republic of Happiness – set, like Rules for Living, on Christmas Day – in which a family meal full of bitter recriminations descends further and further into the bizarre. And in Alice Birch’s Little Light, a family reunion unravels as the trauma buried beneath repeated rituals slowly and painfully becomes clear.

What all these plays share is an acute sense of both the tragic and the ridiculous, which have been intertwined in great drama from Shakespeare to Chekhov. There’s often a strange hilarity in unhappiness Photo: Mark Douet and a bleak reality concealed within laughter. The middle-class domestic settings, meanwhile, are ideal

8 9 10 Photos: Mark Douet CREATIVE TEAM Writer Sam Holcroft Director Simon Godwin Designer Lily Arnold Lighting Designer Matt Daw Composer & Sound Designer Mark Melville Video Designer Andrzej Goulding Movement Director Shelley Maxwell Casting Director Hancock Stevenson Casting Associate Director Spencer Noll Fight Director Kev McCurdy Associate Lighting Designer Sam Waddington BY

Sam Holcroft PRODUCTION TEAM Production Manager Felix Davies CAST Company Stage Manager Richard Llewellyn Deputy Stage Manager Jen Davey Jane Booker Edith Assistant Stage Manager Natasha Harper-Smith Jolyon Coy Matthew Rehearsal Assistant Stage Manager Alexandra Kettell Production Technician Anthony Hannah Ed Hughes Adam Production Electrician Liam Cleary Carlyss Peer Carrie Wardrobe Mistress Hilda Greenwood Laura Rogers Nicole Fit Up Carpenter Philip Atherton Marketing Consultants Joe Public Ltd Francis Press Representation Kate Morley PR Jessica Hasted & Lucy Perry Emma Production Photography Mark Douet

The company would like to thank Churchill China and Ellie Sanders. Rules for Living is a co-production between English Touring Theatre, Royal & Derngate, Northampton and Rose Theatre Kingston Scenery, set painting, properties, costuming, wigs and make-up Rules for Living was first performed in the Dorfman auditorium at the National Theatre, , on 13 March 2015 by Royal & Derngate workshops and facilitated in-house by stage Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including a 20 minute interval management and technical teams.

12 13 JANE BOOKER JOLYON COY ED HUGHES CARLYSS PEER LAURA ROGERS PAUL SHELLEY EDITH MATTHEW ADAM CARRIE NICOLE FRANCIS

Theatre includes: ‘Marion’ in The Secret Theatre includes: The Merchant of Credits for English Touring Theatre include: Carlyss trained at RADA. Laura trained at RADA. Paul trained at RADA. Rapture (), ‘Teresa’ in The Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe and tour); Romeo & Juliet Theatre includes: (The Old Theatre includes: A Lie Of The Mind Credits for English Touring Theatre include: Memory of Water (), Holy Warriors, Antony & Cleopatra Theatre includes: This House (National Vic); Jefferson’s Garden (Watford Palace); (); Winter Solstice Brideshead Revisited ‘Fanny’ in Sense & Sensibility (Watermill (Shakespeare’s Globe); Little Eyolf Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (); A Lovely Sunday Theatre includes: (Theatre Royal, Theatre) and ‘Lady Bountiful’ in Simon (Almeida); Creditors (); Wendy and West End); Dead Dog in a Suitcase (Globe Theatre); But I Made You a Mix for Creve Coeur (Print Room); Private Godwin’s production of The Beaux and Peter Pan (RSC); Our Boys (Duchess Bath); All My Sons (No 1 tour); Long Day’s (Kneehigh); Luna Gale (Hampstead Tape (); The Rivals Lives (UK tour); Tipping The Velvet (Lyric Journey Into Night (Lyceum, Edinburgh); Stratagem (National Theatre); and Theatre); Posh (Royal Court and West Theatre); Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Theatre Royal Bath/Theatre Royal Hammersmith); An Ideal Husband, seasons with the Royal Shakespeare End); Edward II (Royal Exchange); The (Rose Theatre, Kingston); (Vault Festival); Democracy (Sheffield Haymarket); Les Liaisons Dangereuses Pressure, Blue Remembered Hills, Hay All in the Wrong, The Conquering Hero Company. Prince of Homburg (); Crucible and Old Vic); Maykovsky: (Salisbury Playhouse). Fever (Chichester Festival Theatre); All’s Well That Ends Well (National (Orange Tree Theatre); Earthquakes Television includes: Inspector Morse, The Slanting Rain (RSC and Salida Television includes: Midsomer Murders; Masterpieces (Royal Court); 55 Days, in London (No 1 tour); Moonlight, The Titmuss Regained, Murder Most Horrid, Theatre); and Before the Flood (Royal Productions); Romeo & Juliet (Salida Revelations (Hampstead Theatre); Court). Pixies; Grantchester; Brief Encounters; Family Reunion (Donmar Warehouse); A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Midsomer Murders, Productions & Mercury Theatre); Lakeboat Doctors; The Secret Agent; Peter Pan; (USA tour and (Chichester Festival Theatre, Jonathan Creek, Holby City, Foyle’s War, Television includes: Peaky Blinders, The and Prairie du Chien (); Holby City; Eternal Law; Silent Witness; Shakespeare’s Globe); West End and New York); Absurd Person The Only Boy for Me, North & South, Windsors, Midsomer Murders, War & Enron (Headlong, West End and tour); Missing. (West End); The Dark Philosophers Singular, The Real Thing, The Invention of My Family, Doctors, Casualty, Nanny, Peace, Mr Selfridge, The Whale, Locked Everything Must Go (); (National Theatre of Wales); Macbeth, A Love, A Man For All Seasons, The Woman Don’t Wait Up and Testament of Youth. Up Abroad, Henry IV (I & II), Pete Vs Life, The Lifesavers ( & Mercury Radio includes: Now, Where Were We? New World – The Life of Thomas Paine, (BBC Radio 4). in Black (West End); The Secret Rapture, Film includes: Finding Neverland and The Bill, Doctors, The Friday Night Club, Theatre); Rough Crossings (Headlong); As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s The Crucible, Hedda Gabler, (National Priest of Love. Casualty, The Revenge Files of Alistair Lovely and Misfit (Trafalgar Studios); The Dream, , The Taming of Theatre); Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Fury and My Hero. Canterbury Tales (RSC); Hamlet (Old Vic); the Shrew, Richard III (Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, The Twin Rivals, Dingo, Film includes: Beauty and the Beast, The Little Foxes (Donmar Warehouse); Globe); Gloucestershire (Arcola Theatre); Bingo, Money, (RSC); Testament of Youth, The Fifth Estate and Finding the Sun (National Theatre); See How They Run (Royal Exchange); Bad and Julius Caesar The Deep Blue Sea. Master and Margarita (Battersea Arts Girls – The Musical (West End); The Three (Shakespeare’s Globe). Centre); Candida (Stephen Joseph Musketeers, The Barber of Seville (Bristol Radio includes: Byron and the Curse of Theatre); Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Tour); Old Vic); Celestina (Birmingham Rep and Television includes: Paradise Postponed, Sintra, A Girl in Winter (BBC Radio 4); and and ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Young Vic). tour); Jamaica Inn (Salisbury Playhouse); Titmuss Regained, A Tale of Two Cities, Votes for Women (BBC Radio 3). Morse, Secret Army, Midsomer Murders, Television includes: The Honourable (Oxford Stage Company); and Blackwater Angel (Abbey Theatre). Heartbeat, Revelations, and Woman, Ripper Street, Drifters, Blake’s 7. Doctors, The Honourable, Dark Matters, Television includes: EastEnders, New EastEnders, Law and Order II, Wallander, Tricks, The Smoke, Law and Order, Dates, Film includes: Oh! What a Lovely War, Holby, The Sarah Jane Adventures, , Dark Matters, Doctor Who Polanski’s Macbeth, ’s Queen of Swords and David Copperfield. Christmas Special, Midsomer Murders, Macbeth, Caught in the Act, It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet. Film includes: Bulletproof Plan, Anesthesia Missing, Albert’s Memorial, Holby City, and Incendiary. Doctors, Bad Girls, Rock Face, Running Directing credits include: Scared, Relic Hunter, Pleasure Beach and (Orange Tree Theatre); and A Man For All The Sins. Seasons (York Theatre Royal). Audio book credits include: The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Kingsley Amis Trilogy and The Christmasaurus.

14 Photos: Mark Douet 15 SAM HOLCROFT Relatively Speaking (Royal & Derngate Breath (BBC Radio 3); Swallows & Amazons, WRITER , Northampton); Quartermaine’s Grimm Tales (); Saturday Sam’s stage version of Roald Dahl’s Terms (Royal & Derngate Theatres/Salisbury Night (Vanishing Point/Teatro Nacional Fantastic Mr Fox opened at Nuffield Theatre, Playhouse); Mister Heracles (West Yorkshire Sao Jao, Porto/Teatro San Luis); Pride & Southampton, for Christmas 2016 before Playhouse); Romeo & Juliet (Cambridge Arts); Prejudice (Two Bit Classics); Mister Holgado transferring to the Lyric Hammersmith, All’s Well That Ends Well (Straydogs/UK tour); (Unicorn); A Midsummer Night’s Dream London and going out on a UK tour at the Eurydice (Straydogs, BAC/Trafalgar Studios). (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh); Wonderland start of 2017. Other plays include Rules Opera includes: Inkle & Yarico (Straydogs). (Vanishing Point/Napoli Teatro Festival Italia/ for Living (2015) at the National Theatre; Tramway/Edinburgh International Festival); The Wardrobe (2014) for National Theatre Mwana (Ankur/Tron); The Beggar’s Opera LILY ARNOLD (Vanishing Point/Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh/ Connections; Edgar and Annabel (2011), part DESIGNER of Double Feature 1 for the National Theatre; Belgrade, Coventry); What Happened Was Dancing Bears, part of the Charged season Theatre includes: Snow In Midsummer, The This, One Night Stand, Naked Neighbour for Clean Break at Soho Theatre and Latitude Jew of Malta, The Rape of Lucrece, YPS King Twitching Blind (Never Did Nothing/Tron/ Festival; While You Lie at the Traverse Lear, YPS (RSC); Tramway); Recommissioned, Super Slow Way Theatre; Pink, part of the Women, Power Room (Theatre Royal Stratford East); Broken commission, Point to Point (Louie Ingham/ and Politics Season at the Tricycle Theatre; Biscuits (Paines Plough/Live Theatre); Bits Mark Melville); Pinocchio; The Crucible, A Vanya, adapted from Chekhov, at The Gate; of Me Are Falling Apart (Soho Theatre); The Tender Thing; The Ockerby’s On Ice; Hamlet, Cockroach, co-produced by the National Solid Life Of Sugar Water (National Theatre/ Your Country Needs You (but I don’t need JESSICA HASTED LUCY PERRY Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Plymouth); The Sugar Coated my country); Pierrepoint; The Unsociables; EMMA EMMA Theatre (nominated for Best New Play 2008, Bullets of The Bourgeoisie (High Tide/Arcola); The BFG; Two; Merlin; Quicksand; The Snow Tomcat (Southwark Playhouse); The Fruit Queen; Peter Pan; Children of Killers; Of I have been enjoying drama, singing by the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland Lucy is excited to be performing in Rules and shortlisted for the John Whiting Award, Trilogy (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Jeramee, Mice & Men; Jason & The Argonauts (Dukes and dancing lessons at Stagecoach for Living at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. Hartleby and Ooglemore (); Playhouse). Performing Arts since the age of 5, first 2009). She has also written a libretto, The Her previous performances include House Taken Over, for the Festival d’Aix en The Box of Photographs and Minotaur (Polka Dance includes: In a Deep Dark Wood at the Winchester school and now at chorus roles in Beauty and the Beast Theatre); Blake Remixed (West Yorkshire Cambridge. During that time I have Provence and Académie Européenne de (Gobbledegook/Moko Dance); Best Friends (Key Theatre), Robin Hood (Cambridge Musique (2013). Sam was the Writer-in- Playhouse); Forget Me Not (); (M6/Ludus). performed in productions including Corn Exchange), Dick Whittington So Here We Are (HighTide /Royal Exchange); Elf at the and Aladdin Residence at the National Theatre Studio Awards include: Critics Award for Theatre (Key Theatre), Beauty and the Beast from 2013-14 and was the Pearson Gruesome Playground Injuries, The Edge at Milton Keynes Theatre. I’m also a (Cambridge Corn Exchange), Aladdin of Our Bodies (); Beached in Scotland for Best Technical Presentation member of Spotlight Productions, an Playwright in Residence at the Traverse (Dragon); Critics Award for Theatre in (Key Theatre) and Cinderella (Theatre Theatre in 2009-10. In 2014 she was a (Marlowe Theatre); The Boss of it All (New amazing musical youth theatre group in Royal, Bury St Edmunds). Perspectives); Up And Out Christmas Scotland for Best Music & Sound (The Huntingdon, where I recently performed recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler); UK Theatre She trains at Stagecoach Cambridge for Literature in the Drama category, and in Sprout (Northern Stage); Yellow Face (Park in Legally Blonde. My school also offers Theatre/NT Shed); Peddling (Hightide Award for Best Show for Children & Young some great opportunities for drama and and Cambourne, Stage Right 2009 she won the Tom Erhardt Playwriting People (Mister Holgado). and Gail Henry School of Dance. Award for up and coming writers. Festival/59E59); Things Will Never Be The music, and this winter I will be playing Same Again (Tricycle); Happy New (Trafalgar Lady Macbeth in the Shakespeare Her hobbies include dancing at competitions, ice-skating, playing Studios); Ahasverus, The Bullet (Hampstead MATT DAW Schools Festival performance at SIMON GODWIN Downstairs); A Midsummer Night’s Dream LIGHTING DESIGNER Peterborough Theatre, which is very the flute and learning languages. DIRECTOR (Cambridge Arts Theatre); Opera Scenes Credits include: City of Glass (Lyric exciting! Outside of drama I really enjoy Simon Godwin is an Associate Director (National Opera Studio); A Season in the rowing and I love to bake for my family. Hammersmith); Death Takes a Holiday at the National Theatre, where he has Congo, The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic, (); Secret Cinema directed: Twelfth Night, Sunset at the Villa Claire); The Fu Manchu Complex (Oval House); Presents: Moulin Rouge!, Wasted (West Thalia, The Beaux Stratagem, Man and World Enough and Time (. Yorkshire Playhouse); Sigur Rós (World Tour Superman and Strange Interlude. with Bruno Poet); Secret Cinema Presents: 28 At the Royal Court, his work includes: MARK MELVILLE Days Later, Beacons (Park Theatre); Reel Life Routes, If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER (UK Tour); Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded Let You Sleep, NSFW, The Witness, Goodbye Theatre includes: Flight (Vox Motus/ Fantasy (World Tour); Lardo (The Old Red to All That, The Acid Test and Wanderlust. Edinburgh International Festival); Charlie Lion Theatre); Ghost The Musical (The English For the RSC: Hamlet and The Two Gentlemen Sonata (); The Theatre, Frankfurt); Shrek The Musical (UK of Verona. Destroyed Room (Vanishing Point); Human Tour with Hugh Vanstone); The Elephantom (West End and National Theatre). Other theatre includes: Measure For Animals, Violence and Son (nominated Measure (Theatre for a New Audience, New for Olivier Award 2016 ‘Outstanding York), Occupational Hazards (Hampstead Achievement in an Affiliate’);God Bless ANDRZEJ GOULDING Theatre), (Roundabout, the Child (Royal Court); Wit, Birth (Royal VIDEO DESIGNER New York); Richard II (Shakespeare’s Globe); Exchange, Manchester); Yer Granny, Knives in Andrzej works as a Video, Projection and Set Regeneration (Royal & Derngate and tour); Hens, Miracle Man, Empty, My Shrinking Life Designer internationally across all forms of Candida (Theatre Royal Bath); Krapp’s Last (National Theatre of Scotland); Tomorrow live performance. (Vanishing Point/Cena Contemporânea Tape/A Kind Of Alaska, Faith Healer, and Video Designs include: Groundhog Day (Bristol Old Vic); The Winter’s Festival, Brasil/Brighton Festival/Tramway); Dragon (Vox Motus/National Theatre of (Broadway, Old Vic); People, Places and Tale (Headlong with Nuffield Theatre & Things (West End/National Theatre, St Anne’s Schtanhaus/UK tour); All the Little Things Scotland/Tianjin People’s Art Theatre, China); The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Warehouse, NYC); Sweet Bird Of Youth, We Crushed (Almeida Projects); The Country The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Chichester (Tabard); The Seagull, Habeas Corpus, Cutler (Vanishing Point/National Theatre of Scotland); As The Cloud Takes Its Last Festival Theatre); No’s Knife (Old Vic Theatre,

16 Photos: Mark Douet 17 Abbey Theatre); The Suicide, From Morning To KEV MCCURDY As Associate Director for Petersfield Youth Midnight (National Theatre); Tribes (Crucible FIGHT DIRECTOR Theatre productions include: Bugsy Malone, Theatre); Room (Theatre Royal Stratford East, Kev is ‘Fight Instructor’ at The Royal Welsh Peter Pan and The Jungle Book. Abbey Theatre); Rent (St James Theatre, College of Music and Drama, where he trains As Youth Theatre Director for the Orange UK Tour); 1984 (Northern Ballet); Coriolanus students in stage combat techniques. He Tree Theatre, productions include: Animal (Donmar Warehouse); Man To Man (Edinburgh is also the Co-Founder, Chairman, Fight Farm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Iron Man, The Festival); Kiki’s Delivery Service (Southwark Examiner and Senior Stage Combat Tutor Bees Knees and Find Me. Playhouse); La Cenerentola (Opera North); of the Academy of Performance Combat. Into The Hoods (); The Last Other clients include: Young Actors Mermaid (WMC); Hansel and Gretel (Vienna Credits for English Touring Theatre Company Wimbledon, Unicorn Theatre, State Opera); Relative Values (West End); include: The Weir; Silver Lining Mencap, Crying Out Loud, and Shed@thePark Carousel (Barbican); The Impresario / Le Theatre credits include: Miss Saigon Inclusive Theatre Company. Rossignol (Santa Fe Opera); Silent Night (Prince Edward); The Heart of Robin Spencer was Course Convenor/Performance (Philadelphia Opera, US Tour). Hood, Antony and Cleopatra (RSC – Royal Director for Guangdong Performing Arts Set Design Includes: Union (Lyceum Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon College, China and the Applied Theatre BA, Theatre), Sane New World (Ruby Wax and international tour); Batman Live (O2 St Mary’s University. World Tour). Arena); King Lear, Hamlet (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Mother F***er With The GEMMA HANCOCK Andrzej was recently nominated for the first Hat, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Mosquitoes, ever Whatsonstage award for Video Design & SAM STEVENSON Barbershop Chronicles (National Theatre), CASTING DIRECTORS (Groundhog Day) a Welsh Theatre Award for Macbeth, and The Taming Of The Design (The Last Mermaid) and an Off West Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Odyssey: Credits for English Touring Theatre: End Award for Lighting (Room). Missing Presumed Dead, Romeo and Juliet, The Herbal Bed The Conquest of the South Pole, Fiddler on Theatre work includes: Common SHELLEY MAXWELL the Roof (Everyman Liverpool); Don Juan in (National Theatre); The Everyman MOVEMENT DIRECTOR Soho (Wyndhams Theatre); As You Like It Season 2017 (Everyman Theatre); Shelley Maxwell is a Movement Director, (Theatre By The Lake); An Octoroon (Orange (Theatr Clwyd); The Haunting choreographer and performing artist. She Tree Theatre); and Hamlet (Almeida). of Hill House (Liverpool Playhouse); For holds a MA in choreography from Trinity Television credits include: Doctor Who Services Rendered (Chichester); Accolade Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance Christmas Special 2005, The Story of Tracy (St James theatre); The Vertical Hour and has enjoyed a career both in the United Beaker, Hetty Feather (BBC); Hollyoaks (Park theatre); F*ck the Polar Bears, The Kingdom and the Caribbean. (Channel 4); and Pobol Y Cwm (S4C). Royale, Perseverance Drive, The Herd (Bush Theatre); (national tour); Shelley appeared onstage as a West End Film credits include: Season of the Witch; One Man, Two Guvnors (West End and performer in shows such as the Lion Carter of Mars; Journey’s End; Kenya national tour); 55 Days, In the Club, What and the National Theatre’s Fela! (Loraine French Productions); and Canaries the Butler Saw, Abigail’s Party (Hampstead As a contemporary dancer she has toured (Maple Dragon Films). Theatre); The Humans (Rotterdam, New globally with multiple London based and Radio includes: The Jeremy Vine Show York, Avignon); Our Country’s Good (St International Dance Companies. (BBC Radio 2 James Theatre and national tour); The She served as Assistant Movement Director Real Thing (tour); Breakfast at Tiffany’s, for RSC’s most recent production of Hamlet SPENCER NOLL Ring Round the Moon, Waiting for Godot and formed part of the Dance Research ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR (West End); Canary (tour); Tejas Verdes, and Development Team for Julian Fellowes’ Emperor Jones, The Chairs (Gate Theatre); Spencer trained with the National Youth King Lear (RSC); Blood and Gifts (NT). Sam current production of The Wind in the Music Theatre and at The University of Kent, Willows. and Gemma have also cast more than Canterbury and is an awardwinning actor 20 productions for , including She was Movement Consultant for the Young and director (Michael Macliammoir Award Henry IV, Pygmalion, Where There’s A Vic’s production of Cuttin’ It, which won the for Lord Arthur’s Bed - Dublin International Will, Waiting for Godot, , The best new play UK Theatre Award 2016, and Gay Theatre Festival). Dresser, As You Like It, Habeas Corpus and this year’s production of Why It’s Kicking Off Most recently he has worked as Associate Measure for Measure. Everywhere, also at the Young Vic. Director on French Without Tears (Orange TV work includes: Don’t Take My Baby, Our At the start of 2017 she worked with Simon Tree Theatre and tour) and Silver Lining, World War, Glasgow Girls (BBC3), Nightshift, Godwin on Twelfth Night for the National (Rose Theatre Kingston and tour) both Care, The Snipist, The Minor Character and Theatre as Movement Director at the Olivier. produced by English Touring Theatre. Nixon’s the One (‘Playhouse Presents’ for She currently works as an animateur for the Directing credits include: Romeo and Juliet Sky Arts), The Selection (Warner Bros), Rambert Dance Company. (New Wimbledon Studio); Too Far from the four series of Silent Witness (BBC1), Martin During summer 2017 Shelley directed a site Light (The Lion and Unicorn); Dan and Joel Amis’ Money (BBC2), Consuming Passion, Mr specific outdoor production of eventeenS for (Arcola Theatre); Hummingbirds, Kidnap Loveday’s Little Outing (BBC4), The Inspector The Lyric, Hammersmith. (Waterloo East); Iron (Orange Tree Theatre); Lynley Mysteries (BBC1), and many episodes The Orange (); and Market of The Bill for ITV. In 2010 Gemma and Sam Shelley is thrilled to be working alongside Boy (Lost Theatre). received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Simon Godwin once more, together with their casting of Emma for BBC1. English Touring Theatre, for their production Spencer has worked extensively with of Rules for Living. children and young adults. Film work includes: Leave to Remain, Private Peaceful, Babel, The New World.

18 Photo: Mark Douet 19 20 Photos: Mark Douet 21 Founded in 1993, English Touring Theatre is one of Our team the UK’s most successful and influential touring Patrons: Staff: companies. We work with world-class artists to stage Sir Ian McKellen – Actor Richard Twyman – Artistic Director an eclectic mix of new and classic work for audiences Stephen Mangan - Actor Sophie Watson – Executive Producer Trustees: James Quaife – Producer throughout the UK and overseas; theatre that is thrilling, Dan Bates – CEO Sheffield Theatres Jeremy Woodhouse – Producer popular and engaged in the contemporary world. Dame Jenny Abramsky DBE – Annabel Winder – Administrator and PA to the Director Chair, Royal Academy of Music Hanna Osmolska – Head of Finance At the heart of everything ETT does is the passionately Michael Hatchwell – Solicitor Gaya Kathatharan – Finance Officer held belief that everyone, wherever they are, Michael McCabe – Theatre Producer Bridie Donaghy – Assistant Producer Paul Corrigan – Management Consultant Emma Groome – Apprentice Producer deserves access to outstanding theatre. Robert Delamere – Co-Founder, Digital Sofya Dyudina – Intern Theatre & Executive Producer, Slam Films Felix Davies – Production Manager Alastair Keir – Finance Director Jane Claire – ETT FORGE Producer Tara Wilkinson – Theatre Producer – Actor WINNER Greg Williams – Editor, Wired Magazine OF THE 2016, 2015, 2014 & 2013 UK THEATRE Coming Soon AWARD FOR BEST TOURING PRODUCTION

A , BELGRADE THEATRE COVENTRY AND WEST YORKSHIRE PLAYHOUSE CO-PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH ENGLISH TOURING THEATRE

CURVE THEATRE BELGRADE THEATRE WEST YORKSHIRE LEICESTER COVENTRY PLAYHOUSE ett.org.uk Nell Gwynn - 2017 Photo: Tristram Kenton 27 SEP – 7 OCT 11 – 21 OCT 7 – 11 NOV Sponsored by THE SMASH HIT COMEDY

BY Sam Holcroft

MADE IN NORTHAMPTON 2017

ROYAL & DERNGATE, NORTHAMPTON Chief Executive Martin Sutherland Artistic Director James Dacre

Royal & Derngate is the main venue for arts and along with a co-production of King John with entertainment in Northamptonshire, with audience Shakespeare’s Globe. members and participants numbering more than Other recent highlights have included the premiere 474,000 last year, in Northampton and beyond. of Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Pat Barker’s Recent years have cemented the increased profi le Regeneration. Spring Storm and Beyond The of Royal & Derngate as one of the major producing Horizon transferred to the National Theatre, and venues in the country, including being named four time Olivier Award-nominated End Of The Regional Theatre of the Year by the inaugural Rainbow transferred to the West End and Broadway. Stage 100 Awards in 2011, an accolade for which it was nominated again in 2016. The theatre won The venue also presents a diverse range of visiting the award for Best Presentation of Touring Theatre productions on both the Derngate and Royal stages, in the UK Theatre Awards 2015 for its Made In including musicals, dance, comedy and music Northampton work. (including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra). In addition to Rules For Living, highlights of its The wide-ranging Get Involved programme Made In Northampton 2017 season include major engages with schools, families and communities in tours of ’s Death Of A Salesman, a Northamptonshire and beyond, with over 26,000 revival of ’s and a vivid participants last year. new adaptation of The Jungle Book. The cinema adjacent to Derngate auditorium, Highlights of its 2016 season included major tours named after one of the theatre’s most famous of The Herbal Bed (Best Touring Production in the alumni, the Errol Flynn Filmhouse, continues to UK Theatre Awards), King Lear starring Michael present the best of independent cinema, with a Pennington and A Tale Of Two Cities, along with second screen having opened earlier this year. the world premiere of Soul, a new play by Roy Royal & Derngate also continues to work in Williams about Marvin Gaye. The 2015 season partnership to manage The Core at Corby Cube. included world premieres of Arthur Miller’s The Hook and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World,

MADE IN NORTHAMPTON 2016

/royalandderngate @royalderngate Box Oš ce 01604 624811 www.royalandderngate.co.uk Guildhall Road, Northampton, NN1 1DP

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