Helen Murray News

In the year that they celebrate 50 years of commissioning new writing for young people, National Youth Theatre (NYT) will also stage its most recent commission, The Host by Nessah Muthy (recently listed by BBC as a one-to-watch), directed by Zoe Lafferty(Queens of Syria), which will run from 22 - 26 August.

The Bush Theatre is thrilled to share its production of NASSIM written by Nassim Soleimanpour (WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT) and directed by Bush Theatre Associate Director Omar Elerian (One Cold Dark Night, Islands) at the Traverse Theatre for a full run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer.

James Atherton, Taj Atwal, Sally Bankes, Gemma Dobson, Samantha Robinson and David Walker have been cast in Rita, Sue and Bob Too directed by Max Stafford-Clark.

The Hub Theatre announced their 2017-18 season today. Featuring two World Premieres that resonate mightily in our current climate; and the return of their Inaugural production. Season 10 continues Hub's record of staging intricate, honest and magical plays.

This week, London's Bush Theatre reopens following a £4.3 million capital project. The building's revitalisation sees it become more sustainable and entirely accessible, with a new entrance, front-of-house area and garden terrace, improved rehearsal and dressing room facilities, an expanded main auditorium, and a new 70-seat studio space - a home for emerging artists and producers. Madani Younis, Artistic Director since 2012, discusses his hopes for the Bush.

Stewart Permutt's two-hander is the latest piece to run in Park Theatre's Park90 performance space, running alongside Action To The Word's A Clockwork Orange in Park200. As the play begins it looks like it will be a study on religious intolerance and culture clash, but as it goes on it tries to deal with the weighty topic of mental health. This lack of focus is one of the play's biggest failings.

Boundless Theatre presents the UK premiere of Natives, a new play by Glenn Waldron. BroadwayWorld has a  sneak peek at the company in rehearsal below!

It is 30 years since Clare McIntyre's Low Level Panic premiered at the Royal Court. Focusing on a snap shot in the lives of three flatmates; Mary has found a pornographic magazine in the bin and wants to talk about it. Jo is in the bath, wondering how her life would be if she were that bit taller and slimmer, while Celia just wants to light a candle and get away from them both.

Today marks the launch of London based theatre company, The Coterie. The organisation will champion three playwrights to create theatre that explores form, innovates and isn't afraid to take risks.

West-End Olivier Award-winning Box-Office hit The Play That Goes Wrong trips on to the Lyceum stage from Monday 13 - Saturday 18 February, as part of its new UK tour. 

The Hub Theatre's THE MAGI is in many ways made for the winter holidays: it is unabashedly about love and sacrifice. Kelsey Mesa directs this two-person acoustic musical featuring impressive original songs by Eli Pafumi.

I like to write tunes. By tunes I mean real hummable melodies. Some people scoff at this as if 'that's easy' or 'not exactly art', but I thoroughly disagree. Lots of songwriters write both music and lyrics, and I've given lyrics a go, but I like to stick to the music. In my opinion, my job is to serve a lyric. A great melody can carry a poor lyric, but a good lyric sure as hell ain't gonna carry a bad tune. When you combine both a great lyric and a great melody then you've hit the jackpot.

In the sparkling new-staging revisitation of Baddies: The Musical, the antagonists are simply too bad to exist, so in order to keep doing their jobs in our beloved stories, they need some good ol' rebranding. However, the risk is colossal. In a world where there are no villains at all, how will we know who the good guys are? And most of all, who's behind the decision they're too bad?

The Hub Theatre will present a World Premiere musical, THE MAGI from critically-acclaimed and award winning playwright Helen Murray Pafumi with music by award-winning singer/songwriter Eli Pafumi.

It's been twenty years since Mark Ravenhill's notoriously titled Shopping and F**king was first staged at the Royal Court. In his foreword for the Lyric Hammersmith's anniversary production, Ravenhill describes the show's scandalous reputation - and its actual reception. 1996 audiences may have been - largely - ready to nod seriously at plays highlighting such 'issues', but this production, directed by Sean Holmes, seems aimed at a broader demographic than just the theatrical intelligentsia.

The UK premiere of punkplay by Gregory S. Moss at Southwark Playhouse is a riot of a play told at breakneck pace with a killer soundtrack, a coming-of-age story about subcultures, friendship and not-fitting-in - all on rollerskates!

The Bush Theatre has today announced two innovative initiatives that will support and accompany This Place We Know, a landmark project in the theatre's 'breaking out' season. This Place We Know will see six world premieres of specially commissioned plays produced in six borrowed, non-theatre spaces across Shepherd's Bush. Through the Westfield Community Tickets scheme, 20% of the tickets for this season will be available free of charge to residents of the local area. Alongside the programme of plays, Eileen Perrier has been commissioned to complete a photography project which will profile the faces of the local and artistic communities integral to the Bush's breaking out season.

Full casting and the creative team are announced today for the UK premiere of punkplay at Southwark Playhouse.

Phoebe Eclair-Powell began training as an actress at the Drama Centre London, but soon switched over to playwriting. She's worked with the National Youth Theatre on their Epic Stages programme, and her debut play WINK premiered at Theatre503 last year. Next up is FURY, shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award and winner of the 2015 Soho Theatre Young Writer's Award. This modern Medea centres on a young, single mum in a Peckham council flat and opens at Soho Theatre next week, directed by Hannah Hauer-King.

Jewish Plays Project (Artistic Director, David Winitsky) is proud to announce Helen Murray Pafumi has won the 2016 Jewish Playwriting Contest for her play 'Redder Blood,' selected from a high-quality pool of 204 submission and vetted by 50 artists as well as over 450 Community members across the country. Celebrating its 5th year, the Jewish Play Contest continues to encourage a new generation of playwrights to create and develop scripts that reflect the 21st-century Jewish experience in all its complexities, and to ensure that those scripts, once fully-developed, make their way onto major stages.