Finborough Theatre Celebrates Canada's 150th Birthday with FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON

"What's wrong with me? Something's got to be awful wrong with me. Why am I never enough for people?"

As part of the Finborough Theatre's celebrations of Canada's 150th birthday, a new production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre of the European premiere of Footprints On The Moon by one of Canada's most acclaimed playwrights, Maureen Hunter, runs at the Finborough Theatre, playing Sunday and Monday evenings and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 28 May 2017 (Press Night: Monday, 29 May 2017 at 7.30pm).

Joanie loves her home - a small town on the Canadian prairies. But Joanie's mum left her, her husband left her, and now her teenage daughter Carol-Ann wants to leave too...

If only she could "freeze a bit of time", so nothing ever changed - like the footprints on the moon.

As Joanie battles to keep Carol-Ann from leaving to go and live with her dad in Toronto, she is finally forced to confront why she keeps being abandoned by her loved ones, and the loves and losses that have shaped her life.

A finalist for Canada's most prestigious literary award - the Governor General's Award - and winner of the Labatt Award for Best Canadian Play, Footprints on the Moon premiered in Winnipeg in 1988 and has since been produced in New York City, and all over Canada including - amongst many others - Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton and Saskatoon. It now receives its European premiere at the Finborough Theatre.

Playwright Maureen Hunter is one of Canada's most accomplished playwrights. Her work has been produced from coast to coast in Canada, as well as in the USA and the UK and by CBC and BBC Radio. She has been short-listed for two Governor General's Awards, two Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding New Play and the Lou Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. Her play Transit of Venus became the first Canadian play ever produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. An opera version of Transit of Venus, for which she wrote the libretto, premiered at Manitoba Opera in 2007. Other plays include Wild Mouth, Atlantis, Vinci, The Queen of Queen Street, Beautiful Lake Winnipeg, and Sarah Ballenden which premiered in April 2017 at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre.

Director Anastasia Osei-Kuffour returns to the Finborough Theatre where she was aResident Assistant Director including assisting Purni Morell on Alpha Beta. Trained as a director through the Young Vic Directors Programme, she is a Creative Associate at the Gate Theatre, and is the Artistic Director of Wrested Veil for which she directed Hosea's Girl which won aTalawa Studio Firsts Award. Direction includes An Adventure (Bush Theatre), Cell (The Young Vic), Here Comes The Bride (Black Lives Black Words at the Bush Theatre), All The Ways to Say Goodbye (The Young Vic), Dishonour, You Know That I'll Be Back, and Universally Speaking (Theatre 503) and Pushers (Etcetera Theatre). Assistant Direction includes assistingJustin Audibert on Macbeth and Bijan Sheibani on Romeo and Juliet (National Theatre, Stratford Circus and Schools Tour), Gbolahan Obisesan on the Olivier Award nominated Cuttin' It - as part of The Young Vic's Jerwood Assistant Director Programme, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation (The Young Vic, Royal Court Theatre, Birmingham REP, Sheffield Theatres and The Yard Theatre), Ria Parry on Three Generations of Women (Greenwich Theatreand Tour),Lucy Morrison on Plaques and Tangles (Royal Court Theatre), Ellen McDougall on Idomeneus (Gate Theatre) and Henry V (Unicorn Theatre), and - as Boris Karloff Trainee Assistant Director - Carrie Cracknell on A Doll's House (The Young Vic).

Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, 28, 29, 30 May, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 June 2017
Sunday and Monday evenings at 7.30pm. Tuesday matinees at 2.00pm.
Tickets £18, £16 concessions. (Group Bookings - 1 free ticket for every 10 tickets booked.)