Finborough Playwrights Festival Set for 5 July - 30 July

The multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre presents Vibrant 2011 - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights, its annual festival of Finborough Playwrights, running from 5-30 July 2011. The festival features - and is centred around - a month long run of Nick Gill's Mirror Teeth (originally seen as a staged reading in the very first Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough in 2009), accompanied by a six performance Sunday/Monday run of Nell Dunn's Home Death, together with a late night season of ten staged readings of ten new works for the stage by ten UK and international playwrights, discovered, developed or championed by the Finborough Theatre.

Following the hugely successful Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights in October 2009 and Vibrant - An Anniversary Festival of Finborough Playwrights in 2010 which saw 30 Finborough playwrights present 30 new works in 30 days, we return to introduce you to some of the fascinating diverse vibrant voices we have nurtured, and we are particularly delighted to present some of the first plays of brand new older writers who continue to be neglected by other new writing organisations.

Artistic Director Neil McPherson says: "As in previous years, we hope that our annual festival will be a fascinating and idiosyncratic selection of new plays, with a bias towards startlingly contemporary political work, ranging from the intimate to the epic. The writers' ages range from their early 20s to their 70s (building on our commitment to nurture writers over 30 who continue to be neglected by other new writing organisations) and they come from a wide variety of backgrounds including playwrights from England (including a new British Asian playwright, a British-Palestinian writer and a new dramatist from the East Midlands), Scotland (with a new play partially in the Scots language) as well as playwrights from Canada and the United States. Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough 2011 is another great opportunity to see the fruits of the work that happens behind the scenes at the Finborough Theatre as we continue to discover and develop a new generation of theatre makers through our acclaimed Literary Department, our internship programme, our Resident Assistant Director Programme, and our partnership with The National Theatre Studio - the Leverhulme Bursary for Emerging Directors."

Despite remaining completely unfunded, the Finborough Theatre has an unparalleled track record of discovering new playwrights who go on to become leading voices in British theatre. Under Artistic Director Neil McPherson, it has discovered some of the UK's most exciting new playwrights including Laura Wade, James Graham, Mike Bartlett, Sarah Grochala, Jack Thorne, Joy Wilkinson, Simon Vinnicombe, Alexandra Wood, Al Smith, Nicholas de Jongh and Anders Lustgarten. It is the only theatre without public funding to be awarded the prestigious Pearson Playwriting Award bursary for writers Chris Lee in 2000, Laura Wade in 2005 (who also went on to win the Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, the George Devine Award and an Olivier Award nomination), for James Graham in 2006, for Al Smith in 2007, for Anders Lustgarten in 2009 and Simon Vinnicombe in 2010. Three bursary holders (Laura Wade, James Graham and Anders Lustgarten) have also won the Catherine Johnson Award for Best Play written by a bursary holder. Artistic Director Neil McPherson won The Writers' Guild Award for the Encouragement of New Writing in 2010. It has also recently won London Theatre Reviews' Empty Space Peter Brook Award 2010, been named The Stage's Fringe Theatre of the Year and won four awards in this year's inaugural Off West End Awards including Best Artistic Director.

The festival features - and is centred around - a month long run of Nick Gill's Mirror Teeth, accompanied by a six performance Sunday/Monday run of Nell Dunn's Home Death, together with a late night season of ten staged readings of brand new plays.

A partial list of events to the festival follows: 

The World Premiere as part of Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights

Mirror Teeth by Nick Gill. Directed by Kate Wasserberg. Designed by Philip Lindley.
Presented by Brawl in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

"You might at least say thank you, Jenny. I've been out digging a hole for your boyfriend all night. Not to mention severing his legs. Have you ever severed a leg? It's not as easy as it looks. Not with a blunt spade."

The world premiere of Mirror Teeth, a new play by Nick Gill in his first work to be seen in a full production, plays for a limited four-week season from Tuesday, 5 July 2011 (Press Night: Thursday, 7 July 2011 at 7.30pm) at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre.

Jane is a housewife. James sells guns. They live in one of the larger cities in our country and are both terrified of ethnic youths who might well be wearing hoods and carrying knives, or something. All is well in the Jones household, until their sexually frustrated eighteen year old daughter Jenny brings home her new boyfriend, Kwese Abalo...

A visceral, smart, brutally hilarious play about prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.

Playwright Nick Gill makes his professional debut with Mirror Teeth which was first seen as a staged reading part of the original Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights at the Finborough Theatre in 2009, and was written with a grant from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation. Nick won the inaugural Lost Theatre 5 Minute Festival with Something I Wrote In A Hurry. His other works include Heaven (shortlisted for the Royal Court Young Writers' Festival 2007), Funeralesque, Fiji Land (a winner of the inaugural Amnesty International ‘Protect the Human' Award), This is Never Going To Work and Spiderhead. Mirror Teeth was written with a grant from the Peggy Ramsay Foundation.

Director Kate Wasserberg is an Associate Director of Clwyd Theatr Cymru where she has directed Gaslight, Dancing at Lughnasa, Pieces (Clwyd Theatr Cymru and Brits Off Broadway, New York City), The Glass Menagerie (Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Sherman Cardiff and tour of Wales) and James Graham's A History of Falling Things (Clwyd Theatr Cymru and Sherman Cymru, Cardiff.) She was formerly Associate Director of the Finborough Theatre, London, where she directed The Representative, I Wish to Die Singing and The New Morality, and the world premieres of three plays by Finborough Theatre Playwright-in-Residence James Graham - Little Madam, Sons of York and The Man (Time Out Critics' Choice and **** Four Stars in The Guardian, WhatsOnStage, TNT and The Daily Telegraph).

The World Premiere as part of Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights

Home Death by Nell Dunn. Directed by Fiona Morrell.
Presented by Strawberry Vale Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

"I didn't know. I didn't know what dying looks like. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to help him"

Home Death, a new play by Olivier Award winner Nell Dunn, will play for six performances only on Sunday and Monday evenings from Sunday, 10 July 2011 (Press Night: Monday, 11 July 2011 at 7.30pm).

In our materialist culture obsessed with youth, death has become the ultimate taboo. Inspired by real life stories, Home Death is an unflinching yet ultimately uplifting dissection of how our society deals with the reality of dying.

64% of us want to die at home, but in reality only a quarter of us do. A lingering death in a nursing home is one of the biggest fears of the elderly, and yet research from the UK thinktank Demos predicts that by 2013, 90% of us will die in the soulless setting of a hospital ward.

Home Death is a courageous and profoundly compassionate new play that raises essential and urgent questions about palliative care in the UK, and celebrates the strength of friendship and love.

Playwright Nell Dunn is best known for the 1963 publication of Up the Junction, a series of short stories set in South London. The book became a controversial success because of its vibrant, realistic and nonjudgmental portrait of the working classes. It was filmed for television and film and was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 1967, she published her first novel Poor Cow which was made into a film starring Carol White and Terence Stamp, directed by Ken Loach. Her more recent adult books are Grandmothers (1991) and My Silver Shoes (1996). Dunn's acclaimed play Steaming was produced in 1981, won the Society of West End Theatre Award, now known as the Olivier Award, for Best Comedy, and was subsequently filmed by Joseph Losey with Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, and Diana Dors. Her play Sisters was produced in 1994 at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. Her first television film Every Breath You Take was shown in 1987. She won the 1982 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her 2003 play Cancer Tales has toured internationally and been greatly supported the medical profession.

Director Fiona Morrell has recently completed eighteen months as a Staff Director at The National Theatre. Productions included Nation, adapted from Terry Pratchett's novel by Mark Ravenhill, The White Guard by Bulgakov, adapted by Andrew Upton, Moira Buffini's Welcome to Thebes and Bryony Lavery's Six Seeds. She has directed The Water's Edge by Theresa Rebeck (Arcola Theatre), Acquaintances and National Amnesty by Dominic Mitchell (Pleasance London) and The Alice Project (Camden People's Theatre, BAC and the Lakeside Colchester). Fiona has also directed short plays/readings at RADA, Arcola Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Oval House, Theatre 503 and The National Theatre Studio. She has assisted at Arcola Theatre, Almeida Theatre and Second Stage New York. She is a Creative Associate of Strawberry Vale Productions.

The Press on Home Death
"But who, as cuts deepen, will take up Nell Dunn's fine and spirited verbatim play, Home Death, given a rehearsed reading at RADA last week?" Susannah Clapp, The Observer

Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights 2011

WEEK ONE - 12 July-16 July 2011

Tuesday, 12 July 2011 at 9.00pm
The Piper by Colleen Murphy. Directed by Fidelis Morgan.
Cast includes Dudley Sutton, Rachel Leskovac, Pauline Moran, George Irving...

Rats take many forms in the corporate democracy of Hameln where an orchestrated chaos reigns and ghosts of dead children mingle with the living. Ruled by the tyrannical Mayor Pop, the Town Council sells off essential services so that they can buy more casinos. A gang of Rats, led by Kingsley - who reads Nietzsche and longs to be human - bristle at being forced to do naughty jobs in exchange for leftovers. Into this greedy landscape comes Piper, a meek musician who literally collides with Pink, the Mayor's daughter, and they are instantly smitten...but their love is interrupted when the body of the Deputy Mayor's son is fished out of the river. Moral outrage erupts, Kingsley is publicly tortured, and Hameln declares war on the Rats...then the fun begins. Beneath the theatrical merriment of this boisterous comic-tragedy lies an astute meditation on a self-destructing society and the anguish of children clinging to the notion of unconditional love.

Playwright Colleen Murphy's previous works seen in Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals include The December Man/L'homme de decembre (2009) and Beating Heart Cadaver (2010). The Finborough theatre earlier this year presented a mini-season of her work which marked her UK debut with a European premiere (The December Man/L'homme de decembre), a UK premiere (Beating Heart Cadaver) and a world premiere (The Goodnight Bird) of her work. This mini-season within a season marks Colleen's UK debut. Colleen was born in Quebec and grew up in Northern Ontario. Her plays include The December Man/L'homme de décembre (winner of the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, the CAA/Carol Bolt Award for Drama and the 2006 Enbridge playRites Award); Beating Heart Cadaver (nominated for a 1999 Governor General's Literary Award); The Piper, Down in Adoration Falling and All Other Destinations are Cancelled. In 2008, she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. She is currently working on Deliver Me (National Arts Centre), Armstrong's War (Banff Centre) and The Birthday Boy (Shaw Festival). She has twice won awards in the CBC Literary Competition. Colleen's distinct, award-winning films have played in festivals around the world and include Out in the Cold, Girl with Dog, War Holes, Desire, Shoemaker, The Feeler and Putty Worm. Colleen is a Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre.

Director Fidelis Morgan is an actress, director and writer. Her adaptation of Hangover Square was successfully revived at the Finborough Theatre in 2008. She was Assistant Director at the world renowned Glasgow Citizens Theatre, has directed classic plays at the major drama schools, and the King's Head Theatre. On television, Fidelis appeared in Jeeves and Wooster, Mr Majeika and As Time Goes By. On stage, she played leading roles by everyone from Massinger to Coward, Goldoni to Brecht, at theatres like Glasgow Citizens, Nottingham Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman. Her most recent film role was the Matron in Never Let Me Go. She has written seventeen published books include the ground-breaking The Female Wits and the Countess Ashby del a Zouche crime novels. www.fidelismorgan.comWednesday, 13 July 2011 at 9.00pm 

Sihanoukville by Sarah Grochala. Directed by Eleanor Rhode.

When Aneta landed her dream job as a foreign correspondent in South East Asia, she expected to be investigating something a little more exciting than luxury spa facilities. Now she's finally got the scent of a story worthy of her talents, and she's determined to hunt it down no matter what the cost. Martin, Aneta's ex, is the kind of man who only ever realises what he's got once he's lost it. Despite his crippling fear of snakes, spiders and tropical diseases, he's jetting off to the other side of the world to win Aneta back. But this is one holiday in Cambodia that doesn't turn out quite the way he planned.

Playwright Sarah Grochala's previous work seen in Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes The Martyrs of Warsaw, Part I (2010). Her play S-27 received its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre in 2009. S-27 won the first Protect the Human Playwriting Competition in 2007, run by iceandfire in conjunction with Amnesty International and Soho Theatre, and was produced in Sydney by the prestigious Griffin Theatre in 2010. Previous plays include Waiting For Romeo (Pleasance London, RADA and the Edinburgh Festival) which was chosen by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be presented as part of the celebrations marking the centenary of Ibsen's death in 2006 and is currently in production in Poland. She has also written several short plays for Theatre 503 including Remains, Standing Out of the Light and Covent Garden (Urban Scrawl). Sarah is this year's OffWestEnd.com adopted playwright and is currently under commission by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Director Eleanor Rhode's previous direction for Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes The December Man/L'Homme de Decembre (2009) and Barrow Hill (2010). She is a former Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre where she has directed Generous by Michael Healey, which was named Time Out Critics' Choice. She trained at Mountview and The National Theatre Studio, and in 2010 was Staff Director on Greenland at The National Theatre. Further directing includes The Error of Their Ways (Cockpit Theatre), A Number (Camden People's Theatre), This Lime Tree Bower (Edinburgh Festival), and staged readings of The Geese of Beverley Road (Theatre 503) and Photos of You Sleeping (Hampstead Theatre). As Associate Director, she has worked on Lie of The Land (Arcola Theatre), and as an Assistant Director on Trying and S-27 (Finborough Theatre), Lie of the Land (Pleasance Edinburgh), African Gothic (White Bear Theatre) and Terrorism (Oval House Theatre).

Thursday, 14 July 2011 at 9.00pm

There Goes My Future by Nicholas de Jongh. Directed by Sam Yates.

A hot afternoon in Earl's Court early in June 1976. Viola Newbury, an elderly, small-part actress who claims to have been "slightly famous for two or three seasons" more than forty years ago is mixing and sipping old-fashioned cocktails for her "white magic" reunion party that evening. Famous survivors from a similar bohemian occasion she hosted on Election Night, 1929, in the same place seem to be expected. But then a young man arrives with a surprising present to set the party going. And time's forward momentum is jolted into reverse again and again. Ghosts from that distant, high summer night slip into the room and Viola, who says that truth is often best left in wraps, is shocked to discover the lasting significances of those passionate party encounters and their messages in code.

Playwright Nicholas de Jongh's previous work seen in Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes To Keep the Ghost Awake (2010). His Plague Over England received its world premiere at the Finborough Theatre in 2008. It was produced in the West End in 2009 by Bill Kenwright and the Ambassador Theatre Group and was optioned for film production. The script is published by Samuel French Limited. Nicholas was theatre critic of The Evening Standard from 1991 to 2009 and was previously Arts Correspondent and Deputy Theatre Critic for The Guardian. His books include Not in Front of the Audience, a history of homosexuality on stage, and Politics, Pruderies and Perversions , a history of theatre censorship in the UK, which won the Society of Theatre Research Prize in 2001. He wrote a dramatisation of the twentieth century history of this censorship which was given a performance at The Royal Court Theatre during their fiftieth anniversary season. He also contributed a one act play about AIDS to the Royal Court's May Days season in 1991.

Director Sam Yates previous direction for Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights festivals includes Nicholas de Jongh's To Keep the Ghost Awake (2010). He will also be directing Mixed Marriage by St John Ervine at the Finborough Theatre in October 2011. Direction includes Mrs P. (workshop for Mercury Musical Developments), Electra, Oedipus (Garrick Theatre, Stockport), Oleanna (Hong Kong Arts Centre), The Turke (Arcola Theatre), The Tempest and Macbeth (Cambridge ADC) and Yeats' Purgatory (Edinburgh Festival). He was Associate Director to Josephine Hart on Poetry Week (Donmar Warehouse), Michael Grandage on Hamlet with Jude Law (Donmar West End, Elsinore and Broadway) and Madame De Sade with Dame Judi Dench (Donmar West End), Trevor Nunn on Birdsong, (Comedy Theatre), Jamie Lloyd on Salome (Headlong - National Tour), and The Little Dog Laughed (Garrick Theatre). He was Assistant Director to Josie Rourke on How To Curse (Bush Theatre) and Burying Your Brother in the Pavement (National Theatre Connections), Paul Raffield on Hysteria (Birmingham Rep), Rachel Kavanaugh on Uncle Vanya (Birmingham Rep) and Phyllida Lloyd on Wise Children (National Theatre Studio).

LISTINGS INFORMATION

For a complete listing of Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights please visit: www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Finborough Theatre, The Finborough, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Box Office 0844 847 1652 Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk