Anna and Hans are married, in love and moving up in the world - but it is a world ruled by suspicion. Who can be trusted when everyone is listening? Can we ever escape our past?
Let me start this review with a comment by Olney's Artistic Director, Jason Loewith's comment in the program. 'After all my years in this business, many of them championing playwrights and new plays, it takes a lot to knock my socks off. I can count on two hands the experiences that reshaped by understanding of live theater and its possibilities. The world premiere of Ella Hickson's OIL in London two years was one of them. It is a blazingly, ambitious, as intellectually thrilling, as emotionally resonant as most the great works I've seen this century.'
The 2019 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been awarded to U.S. playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury for her play Fairview.
National Endowment for the Arts Acting Chairman Mary Anne Carter has approved more than $27 million in grants as part of the Arts Endowment's first major funding announcement for fiscal year 2019. Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $10,000 to Olney Theatre Center for the American Premiere of Ella Hickson's Oil directed by Tracy Brigden. Art Works is the Arts Endowment's principal grantmaking program. The agency received 1,605 Art Works applications for this round of grantmaking, and will award 972 grants in this category.
The National Theatre's When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, a new play by Martin Crimp is now on stage. It is directed by Katie Mitchell, with a cast including Cate Blanchett, who makes her National Theatre debut alongside Stephen Dillane returning to the National Theatre for the first time since The Coast of Utopia in 2002.
The American Premiere of Ella Hickson's Oil directed by Tracy Brigden begins its Olney Theatre Center run in the Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab on February 27 and runs through March 31. Invited Press Night is Saturday, March 2 at 7:45pm.
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has announced 10 Finalists for its prestigious playwriting Award, the oldest and largest prize awarded to women playwrights.
Step away from the returns queue. The rare presence of Hollywood star Cate Blanchett on a London stage has caused a box office frenzy, but sadly this would-be provocative vehicle - Martin Crimp's loose variations on Samuel Richardson's 1740 proto-novel Pamela, directed by Katie Mitchell - isn't worthy of her talents, nor those of the excellent Stephen Dillane.
The National Theatre has announced its upcoming lineup for the first half of 2019.
Best Of The Dirty Thirty 2018 is a curated collection of our best thirty original plays of the year, which Degenerate Fox will valiantly attempt to perform in just one hour. These plays could be anything: comedy, drama, dance, games, songs, rants, personal, political, experimental - and stuff there just isn't a name for yet. The order of the plays is up to the audience - as we all work to get this chaotically succinct hour of honest performance complete!
The shortlist for the 64th Evening Standard Theatre Awards is unveiled today. It has been expanded to include five names in most categories and the variety of productions reveals the health of London's theatre land.
The National Theatre has today announced its new season
The Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation announces the winner of this year's The Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award, the highest honor at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Steven Atkinson, Artistic Director of HighTide has today announced that HighTide is to start work in Lowestoft, Suffolk with the intention to launch a fourth annual HighTide festival there in 2021.
Steven Atkinson, Artistic Director of HighTide, has today released the full line up for the 2018 HighTide Festivals in Aldeburgh and Walthamstow. At the same time he has announced his intention to move on from HighTide in 2019 after twelve years of successful leadership.
The North Wall today announces a new award as part of the continuation and expansion of its annual celebration of emerging theatre, Alchymy Festival. The Alchymy Company Award offers a young theatre company ongoing support to develop and showcase a new piece of written or devised theatre at Alchymy Festival in 2019.
The Traverse Theatre is excited to announce the final additions to the Traverse Festival 2018 programme - including, in what is Scotland's Year of Young People 2018, Festival favourite Breakfast Plays: Youthquake, pairing three young Scottish playwrights from our Traverse Young Writers' group with three leading British writers. Together they will explore how the younger generation can be a catalyst for political and social change.
Ella Hickson premieres The Writer, a new momentous play about the patriarchal cage of the theatre business. After the success of Oil in 2016, she challenges the status quo through a young writer who wants to change the world. While her character is being kept down by the narcissistic tendencies of the industry, she soars with a metaphoric and poetic piece.
The Dirty Thirty is a collection of thirty original plays which Degenerate Fox will valiantly attempt to perform within just one hour. These plays could be anything: comedy, drama, dance, games, songs, rants, personal, political, experimental - and stuff there just isn't a name for yet. But they're all honest, and they're all fantastically succinct.
A young writer challenges the status quo but discovers that creative gain comes at a personal cost. She wants to change the shape of the world. But a new way of thinking needs a new story.
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