VIBRANT 2011 – a Festival of Finborough Playwrights Twelve New Plays, Twelve Finborough Playwrights…

Press Information The Finborough Theatre is now fully air conditioned.

presents VIBRANT 2011 – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights Twelve new plays, twelve Finborough playwrights…

Bekah Brunstetter Rosa Connor Nicholas de Jongh Nell Dunn Omar El-Khairy Nick Gill Sarah Grochala Titas Halder Brian Logan Anders Lustgarten Colleen Murphy Jane Wainwright

Directed by Kate Budgen. Daniel Burgess. Ola Ince. Brian Logan. Blanche McIntyre. Rae Mcken. Fidelis Morgan. Fiona Morrell. Eleanor Rhode. Oscar Toeman. Kate Wasserberg. Sam Yates.

Curated by Finborough Theatre Artistic Director Neil McPherson Dramaturgy by the Finborough Theatre Literary Department – Literary Manager Van Badham, Senior Reader Ola Ince and Literary Associate Max Pappenheim. Produced by Lucy Jackson and Kate Jagger

“The Earl's Court play-generating boiler room...The Finborough's achievement is a mighty one, doing more for new writing on little or no money than some other, better-funded theatres.” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

The multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre presents Vibrant 2011 – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights, its annual festival of Finborough Playwrights, running from 5-30 July 2011. The festival features – and is centred around – a month long run of Nick Gill's Mirror Teeth (originally seen as a staged reading in the very first Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough in 2009), accompanied by a six performance Sunday/Monday run of Nell Dunn's Home Death, together with a late night season of ten staged readings of ten new works for the stage by ten UK and international playwrights, discovered, developed or championed by the Finborough Theatre.

Following the hugely successful Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights in October 2009 and Vibrant – An Anniversary Festival of Finborough Playwrights in 2010 which saw 30 Finborough playwrights present 30 new works in 30 days, we return to introduce you to some of the fascinating diverse vibrant voices we have nurtured, and we are particularly delighted to present some of the first plays of brand new older writers who continue to be neglected by other new writing organisations.

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

The Finborough Theatre is managed by The Steam Industry. Registered in England and Wales as a company limited by guarantee, no. 3448268. Registered Charity no. 1071304. Registered address: 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED. A member of the Independent Theatre Council. Press Information Artistic Director Neil McPherson says: “As in previous years, we hope that our annual festival will be a fascinating and idiosyncratic selection of new plays, with a bias towards startlingly contemporary political work, ranging from the intimate to the epic. The writers’ ages range from their early 20s to their 70s (building on our commitment to nurture writers over 30 who continue to be neglected by other new writing organisations) and they come from a wide variety of backgrounds including playwrights from England (including a new British Asian playwright, a British-Palestinian writer and a new dramatist from the East Midlands), Scotland (with a new play partially in the Scots language) as well as playwrights from Canada and the United States. Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough 2011 is another great opportunity to see the fruits of the work that happens behind the scenes at the Finborough Theatre as we continue to discover and develop a new generation of theatre makers through our acclaimed Literary Department, our internship programme, our Resident Assistant Director Programme, and our partnership with the National Theatre Studio – the Leverhulme Bursary for Emerging Directors."

Despite remaining completely unfunded, the Finborough Theatre has an unparalleled track record of discovering new playwrights who go on to become leading voices in British theatre. Under Artistic Director Neil McPherson, it has discovered some of the UK’s most exciting new playwrights including Laura Wade, James Graham, Mike Bartlett, Sarah Grochala, Jack Thorne, Joy Wilkinson, Simon Vinnicombe, Alexandra Wood, Al Smith, Nicholas de Jongh and Anders Lustgarten. It is the only theatre without public funding to be awarded the prestigious Pearson Playwriting Award bursary for writers Chris Lee in 2000, Laura Wade in 2005 (who also went on to win the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, the George Devine Award and an Olivier Award nomination), for James Graham in 2006, for Al Smith in 2007, for Anders Lustgarten in 2009 and Simon Vinnicombe in 2010. Three bursary holders (Laura Wade, James Graham and Anders Lustgarten) have also won the Catherine Johnson Award for Best Play written by a bursary holder. Artistic Director Neil McPherson won The Writers’ Guild Award for the Encouragement of New Writing in 2010. It has also recently won London Theatre Reviews’ Empty Space Peter Brook Award 2010, been named The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year and won four awards in this year's inaugural Off West End Awards including Best Artistic Director.

*****

The festival features – and is centred around – a month long run of Nick Gill's Mirror Teeth, accompanied by a six performance Sunday/Monday run of Nell Dunn's Home Death, together with a late night season of ten staged readings of brand new plays.

MAIN RUN... Tuesday, 5 July – Saturday, 30 July 2011

The World Premiere as part of Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights Mirror Teeth by Nick Gill. Directed by Kate Wasserberg. Designed by Philip Lindley. Presented by Brawl in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

"You might at least say thank you, Jenny. I’ve been out digging a hole for your boyfriend all night. Not to mention severing his legs. Have you ever severed a leg? It’s not as easy as it looks. Not with a blunt spade."

The world premiere of Mirror Teeth, a new play by Nick Gill in his first work to be seen in a full production, plays for a limited four-week season from Tuesday, 5 July 2011 (Press Night: Thursday, 7 July 2011 at 7.30pm) at the multi- award-winning Finborough Theatre.

Jane is a housewife. James sells guns. They live in one of the larger cities in our country and are both terrified of ethnic youths who might well be wearing hoods and carrying knives, or something. All is well in the Jones household, until their sexually frustrated eighteen year old daughter Jenny brings home her new boyfriend, Kwese Abalo...

A visceral, smart, brutally hilarious play about prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.

Playwright Nick Gill makes his professional debut with Mirror Teeth which was first seen as a staged reading part of the original Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights at the Finborough Theatre in 2009, and was written with a grant from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation. Nick won the inaugural Lost Theatre 5 Minute Festival with Something I Wrote In A Hurry. His other works include Heaven (shortlisted for the Royal Court Young Writers’ Festival 2007), Funeralesque, Fiji

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Director Kate Wasserberg is an Associate Director of Clwyd Theatr Cymru where she has directed Gaslight, Dancing at Lughnasa, Pieces (Clwyd Theatr Cymru and Brits Off Broadway, New York City), The Glass Menagerie (Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Sherman Cardiff and tour of Wales) and James Graham's A History of Falling Things (Clwyd Theatr Cymru and Sherman Cymru, Cardiff.) She was formerly Associate Director of the Finborough Theatre, London, where she directed The Representative, I Wish to Die Singing and The New Morality, and the world premieres of three plays by Finborough Theatre Playwright-in-Residence James Graham – Little Madam, Sons of York and The Man (Time Out Critics’ Choice and **** Four Stars in The Guardian, WhatsOnStage, TNT and The Daily Telegraph).

PRESS NIGHT: THURSDAY, 7 JULY 2011 AT 7.30PM PHOTOCALL: TUESDAY, 5 JULY 2011 AT 1.00PM-1.30PM

*****

ON SUNDAYS AND MONDAYS... Sundays and Mondays, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25 July 2011

The World Premiere as part of Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights Home Death by Nell Dunn. Directed by Fiona Morrell. Presented by Strawberry Vale Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

"I didn't know. I didn’t know what dying looks like. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help him”

Home Death, a new play by Olivier Award winner Nell Dunn, will play for six performances only on Sunday and Monday evenings from Sunday, 10 July 2011 (Press Night: Monday, 11 July 2011 at 7.30pm).

In our materialist culture obsessed with youth, death has become the ultimate taboo. Inspired by real life stories, Home Death is an unflinching yet ultimately uplifting dissection of how our society deals with the reality of dying.

64% of us want to die at home, but in reality only a quarter of us do. A lingering death in a nursing home is one of the biggest fears of the elderly, and yet research from the UK thinktank Demos predicts that by 2013, 90% of us will die in the soulless setting of a hospital ward.

Home Death is a courageous and profoundly compassionate new play that raises essential and urgent questions about palliative care in the UK, and celebrates the strength of friendship and love.

Playwright Nell Dunn is best known for the 1963 publication of Up the Junction, a series of short stories set in South London. The book became a controversial success because of its vibrant, realistic and nonjudgmental portrait of the working classes. It was filmed for television and film and was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 1967, she published her first novel Poor Cow which was made into a film starring Carol White and Terence Stamp, directed by Ken Loach. Her more recent adult books are Grandmothers (1991) and My Silver Shoes (1996). Dunn's acclaimed play Steaming was produced in 1981, won the Society of West End Theatre Award, now known as the Olivier Award, for Best Comedy, and was subsequently filmed by Joseph Losey with Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, and Diana Dors. Her play Sisters was produced in 1994 at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. Her first television film Every Breath You Take was shown in 1987. She won the 1982 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her 2003 play Cancer Tales has toured internationally and been greatly supported the medical profession.

Director Fiona Morrell has recently completed eighteen months as a Staff Director at the National Theatre. Productions included Nation, adapted from Terry Pratchett’s novel by Mark Ravenhill, The White Guard by Bulgakov, adapted by Andrew Upton, Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes and Bryony Lavery’s Six Seeds. She has directed The Water’s Edge by Theresa Rebeck (Arcola Theatre), Acquaintances and National Amnesty by Dominic Mitchell (Pleasance London) and The Alice Project (Camden People's Theatre, BAC and the Lakeside Colchester). Fiona has also directed short plays/readings at RADA, Arcola Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Oval House, Theatre 503 and the National Theatre Studio. She has assisted at Arcola Theatre, Almeida Theatre and Second Stage New York. She is a Creative Associate of Strawberry Vale

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

The Press on Home Death "But who, as cuts deepen, will take up Nell Dunn's fine and spirited verbatim play, Home Death, given a rehearsed reading at RADA last week?" Susannah Clapp, The Observer

PRESS NIGHT: MONDAY, 11 JULY 2011 AT 7.30PM PHOTOCALL: By arrangement. Please email [email protected]

*****

AND TEN LATE NIGHT STAGED READINGS... Tuesday, 12 July – Saturday, 23 July 2011 Tuesday, 12 July 2011 – The Piper by Colleen Murphy. Directed by Fidelis Morgan. Wednesday, 13 July 2011 – Sihanoukville by Sarah Grochala. Directed by Eleanor Rhode. Thursday, 14 July 2011 – There Goes My Future by Nicholas de Jongh. Directed by Sam Yates. Friday, 15 July 2011 – Given The Times by Omar El-Khairy. Directed by Daniel Burgess. Saturday, 16 July 2011 – Hey Brother by Bekah Brunstetter. Directed by Oscar Toeman. Sunday, 17 July 2011 – No Vibrant performance Monday, 18 July 2011 – No Vibrant performance Tuesday, 19 July 2011 – Bamboozl'd . Written and Directed by Brian Logan. Wednesday, 20 July 2011 – In World by Jane Wainwright. Directed by Blanche McIntyre. Thursday, 21 July 2011 – Splitshift by Titas Halder. Directed by Kate Budgen. Friday, 22 July 2011 – Namaskar by Rosa Connor. Directed by Ola Ince. Saturday, 23 July 2011 – Black Jesus by Anders Lustgarten. Directed by Rae Mcken.

Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights 2011 WEEK ONE – 12 July-16 July 2011

Tuesday, 12 July 2011 at 9.30pm The Piper by Colleen Murphy. Directed by Fidelis Morgan. Cast: Isabella Brazier-Jones. Jo Cameron Brown. Poppy Carter. Rupert Farley. Hermione Gulliford. Bob Gwilym. Carsten Hayes. Philip Herbert. Robin Hooper. Bob Howie. Angus Imrie. George Irving. Frances Lo. Katie Meekison. Pauline Moran. Peter Moreton. Olivia O'Shea. Emily Patry. Dudley Sutton. Sian Thomas. Julian Wadham. Christopher Webber. Tristram Wymark.

Rats take many forms in the corporate democracy of Hameln where an orchestrated chaos reigns and ghosts of dead children mingle with the living. Ruled by the tyrannical Mayor Pop, the Town Council sells off essential services so that they can buy more casinos. A gang of Rats, led by Kingsley – who reads Nietzsche and longs to be human – bristle at being forced to do naughty jobs in exchange for leftovers. Into this greedy landscape comes Piper, a meek musician who literally collides with Pink, the Mayor’s daughter, and they are instantly smitten…but their love is interrupted when the body of the Deputy Mayor’s son is fished out of the river. Moral outrage erupts, Kingsley is publicly tortured, and Hameln declares war on the Rats…then the fun begins. Beneath the theatrical merriment of this boisterous comic-tragedy lies an astute meditation on a self-destructing society and the anguish of children clinging to the notion of unconditional love.

Playwright Colleen Murphy’s previous works seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals include The December Man/L’homme de decembre (2009) and Beating Heart Cadaver (2010). The Finborough theatre earlier this year presented a mini-season of her work which marked her UK debut with a European premiere (The December Man/L'homme de decembre), a UK premiere (Beating Heart Cadaver) and a world premiere (The Goodnight Bird) of her work. This mini-season within a season marks Colleen’s UK debut. Colleen was born in Quebec and grew up in Northern Ontario. Her plays include The December Man/L’homme de décembre (winner of the 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, the CAA/Carol Bolt Award for Drama and the 2006 Enbridge playRites Award); Beating Heart Cadaver (nominated for a 1999 Governor General’s Literary Award); The Piper, Down in Adoration Falling and All Other Destinations are Cancelled. In 2008, she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. She is currently working on Deliver Me (National Arts Centre), Armstrong's War (Banff Centre) and The Birthday Boy (Shaw Festival). She has twice

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Director Fidelis Morgan is an actress, director and writer. Her adaptation of Hangover Square was successfully revived at the Finborough Theatre in 2008. She was Assistant Director at the world renowned Glasgow Citizens Theatre, has directed classic plays at the major drama schools, and the King's Head Theatre. On television, Fidelis appeared in Jeeves and Wooster, Mr Majeika and As Time Goes By. On stage, she played leading roles by everyone from Massinger to Coward, Goldoni to Brecht, at theatres like Glasgow Citizens, Nottingham Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman. Her most recent film role was the Matron in Never Let Me Go. She has written seventeen published books include the ground-breaking The Female Wits and the Countess Ashby del a Zouche crime novels. www.fidelismorgan.com ______

Wednesday, 13 July 2011 at 9.30pm Sihanoukville by Sarah Grochala. Directed by Eleanor Rhode.

When Aneta landed her dream job as a foreign correspondent in South East Asia, she expected to be investigating something a little more exciting than luxury spa facilities. Now she’s finally got the scent of a story worthy of her talents, and she’s determined to hunt it down no matter what the cost. Martin, Aneta’s ex, is the kind of man who only ever realises what he’s got once he’s lost it. Despite his crippling fear of snakes, spiders and tropical diseases, he’s jetting off to the other side of the world to win Aneta back. But this is one holiday in Cambodia that doesn’t turn out quite the way he planned.

Playwright Sarah Grochala’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes The Martyrs of Warsaw, Part I (2010). Her play S-27 received its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre in 2009. S-27 won the first Protect the Human Playwriting Competition in 2007, run by iceandfire in conjunction with Amnesty International and Soho Theatre, and was produced in Sydney by the prestigious Griffin Theatre in 2010. Previous plays include Waiting For Romeo (Pleasance London, RADA and the Edinburgh Festival) which was chosen by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be presented as part of the celebrations marking the centenary of Ibsen’s death in 2006 and is currently in production in Poland. She has also written several short plays for Theatre 503 including Remains, Standing Out of the Light and Covent Garden (Urban Scrawl). Sarah is this year's OffWestEnd.com adopted playwright and is currently under commission by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Director Eleanor Rhode's previous direction for Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes The December Man/L'Homme de Decembre (2009) and Barrow Hill (2010). She is a former Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre where she has directed Generous by Michael Healey, which was named Time Out Critics' Choice. She trained at Mountview and the National Theatre Studio, and in 2010 was Staff Director on Greenland at the National Theatre. Further directing includes The Error of Their Ways (Cockpit Theatre), A Number (Camden People's Theatre), This Lime Tree Bower (Edinburgh Festival), and staged readings of The Geese of Beverley Road (Theatre 503) and Photos of You Sleeping (Hampstead Theatre). As Associate Director, she has worked on Lie of The Land (Arcola Theatre), and as an Assistant Director on Trying and S-27 (Finborough Theatre), Lie of the Land (Pleasance Edinburgh), African Gothic (White Bear Theatre) and Terrorism (Oval House Theatre). ______

Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 9.30pm There Goes My Future by Nicholas de Jongh. Directed by Sam Yates.

A hot afternoon in Earl's Court early in June 1976. Viola Newbury, an elderly, small-part actress who claims to have been "slightly famous for two or three seasons" more than forty years ago is mixing and sipping old-fashioned cocktails for her "white magic" reunion party that evening. Famous survivors from a similar bohemian occasion she hosted on Election Night, 1929, in the same place seem to be expected. But then a young man arrives with a surprising present to set the party going. And time's forward momentum is jolted into reverse again and again. Ghosts from that distant, high summer

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Playwright Nicholas de Jongh’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes To Keep the Ghost Awake (2010). His Plague Over England received its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre in 2008. It was produced in the West End in 2009 by Bill Kenwright and the Ambassador Theatre Group and was optioned for film production. The script is published by Samuel French Limited. Nicholas was theatre critic of The Evening Standard from 1991 to 2009 and was previously Arts Correspondent and Deputy Theatre Critic for The Guardian. His books include Not in Front of the Audience, a history of homosexuality on stage, and Politics, Pruderies and Perversions, a history of theatre censorship in the UK, which won the Society of Theatre Research Prize in 2001. He wrote a dramatisation of the twentieth century history of this censorship which was given a performance at the Royal Court Theatre during their fiftieth anniversary season. He also contributed a one act play about AIDS to the Royal Court's May Days season in 1991.

Director Sam Yates previous direction for Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Nicholas de Jongh's To Keep the Ghost Awake (2010). He will also be directing Mixed Marriage by St John Ervine at the Finborough Theatre in October 2011. Direction includes Mrs P. (workshop for Mercury Musical Developments), Electra, Oedipus (Garrick Theatre, Stockport), Oleanna (Hong Kong Arts Centre), The Turke (Arcola Theatre), The Tempest and Macbeth (Cambridge ADC) and Yeats’ Purgatory (Edinburgh Festival). He was Associate Director to Josephine Hart on Poetry Week (Donmar Warehouse), Michael Grandage on Hamlet with Jude Law (Donmar West End, Elsinore and Broadway) and Madame De Sade with Dame Judi Dench (Donmar West End), Trevor Nunn on Birdsong, (Comedy Theatre), Jamie Lloyd on Salome (Headlong – National Tour), and The Little Dog Laughed (Garrick Theatre). He was Assistant Director to Josie Rourke on How To Curse (Bush Theatre) and Burying Your Brother in the Pavement (National Theatre Connections), Paul Raffield on Hysteria (Birmingham Rep), Rachel Kavanaugh on Uncle Vanya (Birmingham Rep) and Phyllida Lloyd on Wise Children (National Theatre Studio). ______

Friday, 15 July 2011 at 9.30pm Given The Times by Omar El-Khairy. Directed by Daniel Burgess.

With the recession beginning to bite and the impending threat of mass layoffs, workers at the New Media plant find themselves caught up in a bitter struggle with their employers. As union representatives fail to break the deadlock, Ashley decides to take matters into his own hand. Accompanied by an ambitious young journalist, he takes the company's CEO hostage. But as the stakes are raised and pressure builds in the cramped office, allegiances begin to shift. The truth may finally come out, but this is one situation that no one will be able to negotiate themselves out of...

Playwright Omar El-Khairy is a member of the Finborough Theatre Writers' Group, and is currently completing his PhD at the London School of Economics. As a playwright, he has been a member of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme, the Soho Theatre Writers' Centre, the Arcola Theatre and Tamasha Theatre Writers' Groups, where he developed new scripts for public readings. The Soho Theatre also commissioned him to develop their first online distributed narrative project. He was invited by the Old Vic New Voices to showcase his short play Latitudes at the Public Theatre, New York, as part of the T.S. Eliot US/UK Programme in May 2010. His first short screenplay, Tunnels, is currently in production and being filmed in the West Bank, Palestine. In 2010, he co-founded paper tiger Productions - a collective of international theatre and filmmakers. Their first production was a devised play, Burst, inspired by Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010.

Director Daniel Burgess’ previous direction for Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Beating Heart Cadaver (2010). He was a Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre where he worked on A Day at the Racists, Molière, or The League of Hypocrites and Too True To Be Good. He directed the UK premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks' In The Blood at the Finborough Theatre in 2010. Other direction includes Days Of Significance (Garage Theatre), The Pillowman (Norwich Playhouse), and Waterton's Wild Menagerie (Theatre 503). Daniel is currently assisting at Shakespeare's Globe on As You Like It. ______

Saturday, 16 July 2011 at 9.30pm

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Isaac is sleeping on his brother Ben's couch ... indefinitely. Their love/hate relationship is pushed to the limit when a girl shows up with her eyes set on both of them. An Asian girl. Hot.

Playwright Bekah Brunstetter’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Green (2009) and Mine (2010). She is a Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre and received her UK debut at the Finborough Theatre in 2009 with Oohrah! (which also recently received its US premiere at the Atlantic Theater, New York City). The Finborough Theatre has also presented the premieres of You May Go Now – A Marriage Play (2010) and Miss Lilly Gets Boned (2010). Bekah was also Resident Playwright of Ars Nova (NYC) in 2009, and a member of the Women’s Project Writers Lab, and the Primary Stages Writer’s Group. She is twice winner of the New York Innovative Theater Award for Best Original Full-Length Play and twice winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival. Her work has received acclaim across the United States and has been produced and developed by at Boston Theatre Works, the Ohio Theater, The Alliance Theatre, Aurora Stage and many others. Her other plays include To Nineveh (New York Innovative Theater Award for Best New Full Length Play 2006), Sick (Winner, Samuel French Short Play Festival 2006), Fucking Art (Winner, Samuel French Short Play Festival 2008) and Avocado (King’s Head Theatre). She is currently working on commissions for Naked Angels, Ars Nova and the Roundabout. www.bekahbrunstetter.com

Director Oscar Toeman is currently the Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre, during which he has worked on Accolade, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd and Mirror Teeth. Previous direction includes The Bacchus of Bethnal Green (Old Vic New Voices), Be Yourself (Theatre 503) and The Stanhope Sisters (The Egg, Theatre Royal Bath). He read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge University, and trained on the Young Vic's Directors Course. ______

Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights WEEK TWO – 19 July-23 July 2011

Tuesday, 19 July 2011 at 9.30pm Bamboozl’d Written and Directed by Brian Logan.

London, the 1750s. Notorious Scotophobe Samuel Johnson is creating his new Dictionary, which will instruct Britain and its empire how to speak. And helping him do so: the Macbean brothers, squabbling siblings, Scottish exiles and freelance hacks at work on the book that will condemn their native tongue – Scots – to slow oblivion. Brian Logan’s word-bending, wig-swapping two-hander is a strange, eventful history about love and language loss. Does how we speak affect who we are? Should we care when languages die? And what would you sacrifice to get ahead?

Playwright and Director Brian Logan’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes David Hume’s Kilt Or, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Scotland (2010). He is a writer and theatre- maker, The Guardian’s comedy critic, ex-Assistant theatre editor of Time Out, and covers theatre and the arts for The Times, The Independent on Sunday and others. His play The Key to the Universe was runner-up in the Robert McLellan Award for plays in the Scots language; his work has also been developed and performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the National Theatre of Scotland. He is a co-founder and performer with Cartoon de Salvo theatre company, whose shows include Meat and Two Veg (BAC and International Tour), the allotment-set site-specific event The Sunflower Plot (2005), and the improvised Hard Hearted Hannah and Other Stories (Lyric Hammersmith, British Council Showcase and tour). Brian’s work as a director includes Better Humans (BAC). ______

Wednesday, 20 July 2011 at 9.30pm In World by Jane Wainwright. Directed by Blanche McIntyre.

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Playwright Jane Wainwright is a member of the Finborough Theatre Writer's Group. Previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Barrow Hill (2010). Born in Derbyshire, she has been a member of the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme, their Invitation Playwrights course and their ‘SuperGroup’ of new playwrights. In March, she was shortlisted for the T S Eliot UK/US Exchange. Her play Photos of You Sleeping was performed as part of Hampstead Theatre’s Start Night in 2009.

Director Blanche McIntyre’s previous direction for Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Green (2009), Rock Paper Scissors (2010) and The Voice of Scotland (2010). For the Finborough Theatre, Blanche has directed Accolade (2011) and Molière or the League of Hypocrites (2009). Blanche was the winner of the first Leverhulme Bursary for Emerging Theatre Directors, and was Director in Residence at the National Theatre Studio, London, and the Finborough Theatre in 2009. Other direction includes Open Heart Surgery (Soho Theatre and Southwark Playhouse), Wuthering Heights (National Tour), The Revenger’s Tragedy (BAC), The Master and Margarita (Greenwich Playhouse), Three Hours After Marriage (Union Theatre), A Model for Mankind (Cock Tavern), Doctor Faustus, The Devil Is An Ass and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as Told to Carl Jung by an Inmate of Broadmoor Asylum (White Bear Theatre), Cressida and The Invention of Love (Edinburgh Festival). As Associate Director; The Big Fellah (Out of Joint), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor (Changeling Theatre Company). She was Associate Director at Out of Joint in 2010. ______

Thursday, 21 July 2011 at 9.30pm Splitshift by Titas Halder. Directed by Kate Budgen.

Kitchen life. Relentless shifts in sweltering heat for minimum wage and not much else, but fuelled by drum'n'bass these young chefs work hard and fast. When a chance to become the new Head Chef presents itself, the fight to escape from the hellish routine is on. Passion and artistry clashes with prejudices, profit-margins, and self-destructive habits. A raucous comedy, set on the beautiful South Coast.

Playwright Titas Halder’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Jugantor (2010). His previous direction for Vibrant festivals includes Face Up, Face Down (2009). His new play Darkling was recently given a staged reading at the Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai. He is a former Literary Associate and Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough, where he directed Painting A Wall. As a playwright, he trained with the Royal Court Theatre's Critical Mass Programme. He was formerly Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse and a Creative Associate at the Bush Theatre.

Director Kate Budgen completed an MFA in Theatre Directing at Birkbeck College in 2007 and has been Associate Director at Shropshire based Pentabus Theatre since 2008. Recent directing includes Tales of the Country (National Tour), Miriam Gonzalez Durantez (Theatre 503) and Bedbound (Lion and Unicorn). She has worked as an Assistant Director for the Gate Theatre, the Almeida Theatre, The Opera Group, Pentabus Theatre and most recently for Opera North. She completed the National Theatre Studio Director Course in May 2010 and she is a Creative Associate at the Bush Theatre. She was runner up in the 2010 JMK Director Award with The Hairy Ape, which will be produced in Spring 2012. ______

Friday, 22 July 2011 at 9.30pm Namaskar by Rosa Connor. Directed by Ola Ince.

Meet Becks, 25, university educated and stuck in a dead end job she hates whilst trying to produce her own music and make it as DJ. When she finds out she’s got terminal cancer, she becomes disillusioned with society and pretty much abandons civilisation to live out the rest of her days on a mountaintop in India. Then she meets Shiva – the God – and begins to re-evaluate her values as she prepares for the final goodbye.

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Playwright Rosa Connor is a member of the Finborough Theatre Writer's Group. Her first full length play In His Image was produced by Hampstead Theatre’s heat&light programme in March 2010. She has recently been commissioned by Tamasha in association with the Mulberry School for Girls to write a short play to be showcased at the Soho Theatre in June 2011. She is also developing a project called Sirens which will be showcased at the Hoxton Underbelly in July 2011. She has worked with and written for DryWrite and Oxford School of Drama, Hampstead Theatre, Royal Court Young Writers Programme and 'SuperGroup', IsoProductions, ThickSkin, the Central School of Speech of Drama, the Roundhouse, Factory Theatre, Rosemary Branch Theatre and IdeasTap and the National Youth Theatre.

Director Ola Ince is currently Senior Reader at the Finborough Theatre. Previous direction includes Far Away (The Studio, Rose Bruford College), The Inconvenient Store (Tooting Hub), The Frame (Unicorn Theatre), The Island (Unicorn Theatre), Prettier Than Money (Sydenham Arts Festival) and Pop (Warehouse Theatre). She has worked as an Assistant Director for the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, the Young Vic, Tristan Bates Theatre, King's Head Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company Fringe Festival. She graduated from Rose Bruford College with a First Class Honours BA in Theatre Directing and is the current recipient of the Rose Bruford Directing Bursary. ______

Saturday, 23 July 2011 at 9.30pm Black Jesus by Anders Lustgarten. Directed by Rae Mcken.

Zimbabwe, 2014. With the fall of the Mugabe regime, the new coalition government is investigating human rights abuses committed in the recent past – and who ordered them. Eunice, recently returned from South Africa, is sent to examine Gabriel, one of the most notorious of the Green Bombers. But what will she find – about him, about the world that produced him, and about herself? Black Jesus asks uncomfortable questions about guilt, responsibility and complicity, and how we can make the world a better place. Black Jesus was produced at the Harare International Festival of Arts in April 2010, where the Guardian described it as a "major highlight of the festival.

Playwright Anders Lustgarten’s previous work seen in Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals include Death and the Kit-Kat (A Torture Comedy) (2009) and The Punishment Stories (2010). The Finborough Theatre has presented a play by Anders annually since 2007 including The Insurgents (2007), Enduring Freedom (2008) and – as Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre – A Day at the Racists, about the BNP but mainly about New Labour's betrayal of the working class, which won the Catherine Johnson Award. He is a political activist and playwright, who has been arrested on four continents. All his plays are about how ordinary people deal with the world our political masters bequeath to us, and how we can make it better. He recently wrote and performed a monologue on capitalism, The Fat Man, for Theatre Uncut. Anders is currently writing two plays for the National Theatre about China: one about modern history and the move from Maoism to market, and the other for teenagers about love and knock-off phones. He is also under commission to the Royal Court Theatre and Lyric Hammersmith.

Director Rae Mcken’s previous direction for Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes David Hume’s Kilt Or, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Scotland (2010). She directed the English premiere of Robert McLellan’s classic Scots language play, Jamie the Saxt, at the Finborough Theatre in 2007, and directed Tim Barlow in The War Plays, a double bill including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Waterloo, in 2005. Rae was a recipient of the Channel 4 Regional Theatre Director’s Award and spent a year at Salisbury Playhouse as Resident Director where she assisted on several productions as well as directing Charlotte Jones’ play Airswimming. Other directing work includes Respect (Birmingham Rep), Origin Unknown (Theatre Royal Stratford East), and Stamping, Shouting and Singing Home (mac and National Tour). Rae is Artistic Director of Custom/Practice with whom she has directed Macbeth and will shortly direct Romeo and Juliet. Rae has also worked as an Assistant Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Court Theatre and is currently Associate Director on The Wiz for Birmingham Rep.

*****

LISTINGS INFORMATION Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights Finborough Theatre, The Finborough, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Box Office 0844 847 1652 Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson

Mirror Teeth Tuesday, 5 July – Saturday, 30 July 2011 Tuesday to Saturday Evenings at 7.30pm. Sunday Matinees at 3.00pm. Saturday Matinees at 3.00pm (from the second week of the run). Prices for Weeks One and Two (5-17 July 2011) – Tickets £13, £9 concessions, except Tuesday Evenings £9 all seats, and Saturday Evenings £13 all seats. Previews (5 and 6 July) £9 all seats. £5 tickets for under 30’s for performances from Tuesday to Sunday of the first week when booked online only. £10 tickets for residents of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on the first Saturday of the run only. Prices for Weeks Three and Four (19-30 July 2011) – Tickets £15, £11 concessions, except Tuesday Evenings £11 all seats, and Saturday evenings £15 all seats. Performance Length: Approximately 80 minutes.

Home Death Sundays and Mondays, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25 July 2011 Evenings at 7.30pm. Ticket Prices £13, £9 concessions Performance Length: Approximately 90 minutes.

Staged Readings Tuesday, 12 July – Saturday, 23 July 2011 Tuesday to Saturday evenings at 9.30pm Tickets £4 all seats

Week One – 12 July-16 July 2011 Tuesday, 12 July 2011 – The Piper by Colleen Murphy. Directed by Fidelis Morgan. Wednesday, 13 July 2011 – Sihanoukville by Sarah Grochala. Directed by Eleanor Rhode. Thursday, 14 July 2011 – There Goes My Future by Nicholas de Jongh. Directed by Sam Yates. Friday, 15 July 2011 – Given The Times by Omar El-Khairy. Directed by Daniel Burgess. Saturday, 16 July 2011 – Hey Brother by Bekah Brunstetter. Directed by Oscar Toeman. Sunday, 17 July 2011 – No Vibrant performance Monday, 18 July 2011 – No Vibrant performance Week Two – 19 July-23 July 2011 Tuesday, 19 July 2011 – Bamboozl'd . Written and Directed by Brian Logan. Wednesday, 20 July 2011 – In World by Jane Wainwright. Directed by Blanche McIntyre. Thursday, 21 July 2011 – Splitshift by Titas Halder. Directed by Kate Budgen. Friday, 22 July 2011 – Namaskar by Rosa Connor. Directed by Ola Ince. Saturday, 23 July 2011 – Black Jesus by Anders Lustgarten. Directed by Rae Mcken.

For more information, interviews and images, please contact Neil McPherson on e-mail [email protected] or 07977 173135 Download press releases and images from http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/press-resources.php

118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED Telephone 020 7244 7439 e-mail [email protected] www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk Artistic Director Neil McPherson