Casting Announced For Award-Winning Canadian Play at Finborough Theatre

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.

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 a Resident 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).

The cast:
Anne Adams | Joanie
Theatre includes Drones, Baby, Drones (Arcola Theatre), Burning Bridges (Theatre503), The House of Bernarda Alba (GreasyJo & Co, Chicago), The Old Masters and The Cherry Orchard (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago), Imagining Brad, This is Our Life and Life and Limb (Pine Box Theatre, Chicago), Mauritius (Northlight Theatre, Illinois),and Orange Lemon Egg Canary (Uma Productions, Chicago).
Film includes 55 Steps, Chubby Funny and Samuel Street.
Television includes 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover.

Sally Cheng | Carol-Ann
Trained at Guildford School of Acting.
Theatre includes The Emperor And The Nightingale (Theatre by the Lake, Keswick), Singin' In The Rain (Octagon Theatre, Bolton), Deadline: 24 Hour Plays (Courtyard Theatre) and Strange Ghost (Cambridge Festival Theatre).

Samantha Coughlan | Beryl
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include His Greatness and Blue Surge.
Trained at Circle In The Square Theater School, New York City.
Theatre includes National Anthems (The Old Vic), A View From the Bridge (The Young Vic and Wyndham's Theatre), The Shape of Things (Ambassadors Theatre), The End of Longing (Playhouse Theatre), Vieux Carre (King's Head Theatre and Charing Cross Theatre), Death of A Salesman (Lyric Theatre), Problem Child (New End Theatre, Hampstead)The Big Sleep (The Mill at Sonning), The Children's Hour (Harold Pinter Theatre), Orpheus Descending (English Theatre Berlin), Rain Man (Apollo Theatre), Steel Magnolias (Octagon Theatre, Bolton), The White House Murder Case (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond) and The Dutchman (The Crate Gallery).
Film includes Kingsman - The Golden Circle, Criminal, Survivor, Kick Ass 2, The Bends, Rabbit Fever and Love Me Do for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the IIFC Awards.
Television includes Absentia, Obsession: Dark Desires III, Poet in New York, Jonathan Creek, Dead or Alive, Stella, Above Suspicion (Silent Scream), Absolute Power, Spooks, Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Deadman's Gun.
Voiceovers include commercials, narrations and award ceremonies.

Nicholas Goh | Boone
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Shangri La, part of Vibrant 2014 - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights.
Trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.
Theatre includes Breakfast At Tiffany's (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Whisper House (The Other Palace), The King And I (The Curve, Leicester) and Martha, Josie And The Chinese Elvis (Coliseum Theatre, Oldham).
Film includes Skyfall, Cheng, Gale Force 10, The Silk Road, Origins and One Child.
Television includes EastEnders, Last Tango in Halifax, New Tricks, My Family, Mata Mata, River, The Hostage, Death On The Beach and Faking It.

Derek Hagen | Dunc Carr
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include Something Cloudy, Something Clear.
Trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Theatre includes Carousel (London Coliseum), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Million Dollar Quartet and Enron (Noël Coward Theatre), Carousel (Savoy Theatre), Gone with the Wind (New London Theatre), Twentieth Century Boy (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry), More Lies About Jerzy (New End Theatre, Hampstead) and Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream (National Tour).
Film includes Parliament Messenger, The Tiger And The Snow and Fritz.
Television includes D-Day and Conquest.
Voiceovers include several video games.

PRESS NIGHT: MONDAY, 29 MAY 2017 AT 7.30PM
PHOTOCALL: MONDAY, 29 MAY 2017 AT 5.00PM-5.30PM

Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Box Office 0844 847 1652 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.)