Kate Pakenham News

The 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has been awarded to U.K. playwright Lucy Prebble for her play A Very Expensive Poison.

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has announced 10 Finalists for its prestigious playwriting award, the oldest and largest prize awarded to women playwrights.

St. Ann's Warehouse, responding to popular demand nearly two months before performances begin, has extended the celebrated Gate Theatre Dublin production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by Yaël Farber and featuring Academy Award nominee Ruth Negga (Loving, AMC's 'Preacher'), in a 'mesmerizing' (Irish Times) American stage debut, as the Dane. With Farber's direction and text edit, the focus shifts from Hamlet's anguish and identity to the force of resistance against the raw usurpation of power. The production, which begins February 1, 2020, will now play an additional week, through March 8, 2020.

The Women's Prize for Playwriting, launched by EKP and Paines Plough, today announces a partnership with Samuel French, a Concord Theatricals company, who will publish the winning scripts found in first, second and third place.

EKP and Paines Plough today launch The Women's Prize for Playwriting to celebrate and support exceptional UK and Ireland-based playwrights who identify as female. The winning playwright will receive £12,000 in respect of an exclusive option for EKP and Paines Plough to co-produce the winning play. The founding sponsor of The Women's Prize for Playwriting is PER.

In 2020, St. Ann's Warehouse celebrates four decades of introducing some of the world's most innovative artists and productions to American audiences. First established at the National Landmark Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity (1980-2000), the organization has thrived since 2015 in its spectacular, infinitely reconfigurable permanent home on the Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront.

The Donmar Warehouse today announces Artistic Director Josie Rourke's farewell production, Sweet Charity, choreographed by the world-renownedWayne McGregor, who reunites with Josie after working on her debut film Mary Queen of Scots. Josie returns to the music of Cy Coleman who wrote the score for Rourke's Olivier Award-winning production of City of Angels. The book is by Neil Simon and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.

Casting is today announced for Emilia, written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and directed by Nicole Charles at the Vaudeville Theatre from 8 March - 15 June 2019, following its run at Shakespeare's Globe in 2018.

Following its sell-out run at Shakespeare's Globe, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's exciting and entertaining new play Emilia, directed by Nicole Charles, bursts into the Vaudeville Theatre for a strictly limited season from 8 March - 15 June 2019.

The Donmar Warehouse today announces the appointment of Henny Finch as the new Executive Producer from 7 January 2019, succeeding Kate Pakenham. Henny will support and work alongside newly appointed Artistic Director Michael Longhurst in the creative and organisational running of the Donmar Warehouse, ahead of his first season in 2019.

Earlier this week news broke that Glenda Jackson, fresh from her triumphant, Tony-winning run in Three Tall Women, will next don the crown as Shakespeare's tragic monarch King Lear. Broadway is making much ado about something and understandably so. New York stages haven't seen much gender-swapped or gender-blind casting of Shakespeare, but take a peek across the pond to find a revolution of sorts in the interpretation of the Bard's work.

St. Ann's Warehouse welcomes back the Donmar Warehouse to present the American screen premieres of their acclaimed, visceral all-female Shakespeare Trilogy-Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest-directed by Phyllida Lloyd, May 31-June 3.

Artistic Director Josie Rourke said, "I'm delighted to announce two new productions at the Donmar, joining the previously announced THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, for my penultimate season, with all three directed by women.

Donmar Warehouse has released a statement regarding the death of London actor Alex Beckett.

St. Ann's Warehouse welcomes back the Donmar Warehouse to present the American screen premieres of their acclaimed, visceral all-female Shakespeare Trilogy-Julius Caesar, Henry IV, and The Tempest-directed by Phyllida Lloyd, May 31-June 3. In 2016, following a 13-week final repertory season, the plays were filmed in front of a live audience in London and edited for the screen to include separately shot, hand-held and GoPro footage breaking the formality of the traditional live camera "capture" of stage productions.

I live here. I live here. You can't see that, though. You can't see it. This is where I live. Here.'

National Theatre appoints Alastair Coomer CDG as Head of Casting The National Theatre has appointed Alastair Coomer CDG as its new Head of Casting. Previously Casting Director at the Donmar Warehouse, Alastair has cast a diverse range of productions at the Donmar including: The Weir, Coriolanus, My Night with Reg, Privacy, City of Angels, The Vote, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Faith Healer, St Joan, Limehouse and Belleville.

The Donmar Warehouse today announces that Josie Rourke is to step down in 2019, after eight years as Artistic Director, and Executive Producer Kate Pakenham will leave in June 2018. The team were the first female partnership to run a London theatre. During Rourke and Pakenham's tenure the Donmar stage has seen ground-breaking productions, including BAFTA-nominated The Vote, with Dame Judi Dench, which reached over half a million homes on the night of the 2015 General Election; the award-winning Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston (2013); and the culture-shifting all-female Shakespeare Trilogy starring Harriet Walter, from director Phyllida Lloyd (2012-2016) in London and New York, and on screen.

Led by the National Theatre, a group of the UK's top stages have joined together to release the following statement in relation to the recent allegations against former Royal Court artistic director and UK theatre director Max Stafford-Clark, and the ever-burgeoning controversy surrounding Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres Robert Hastie today announces his new season for 2018.