Ruth Gemmell and Emma Paetz Star in the World Premiere of NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN at Theatre 503

"An officer drove me up to gates and told me to wait, that it was no place for a woman."

The wife of a prison camp commandant is throwing a party. She asks her husband for champagne. Instead he brings home a ballet dancer from the camp.

Set towards the end of the Second World War, Cordelia O'Neill's play combines theatre with live music and dance to tell the extraordinary story of two women, seemingly worlds apart, who become inextricably entwined in their struggle to survive.

No Place For A Woman, starring Ruth Gemmell and Emma Paetz, and Elliott Rennie on cello, directed by Kate Budgen, will get its world premiere at Theatre503 from Wednesday 3 May to Saturday 27 May.

Ruth Gemmell has worked at the RSC (Midsummer Mischief, Midwinter, Regan in King Lear, Macbeth), National Theatre (CoramBoy) , Bush Theatre (Sixty Six Books, Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead), Hampstead Theatre (Ancient Lights) and the Royal Court (The Weir). Her recent TV roles include Octavia Putney in Penny Dreadful, two series of Home Fires and Jen Dugdale in two series of Utopia. Her films include Fever Pitch, and Good.

Emma Paetz is a recent graduate of Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She was in You're Human Like the Rest of Them at the Finborough Theatre and the film Final Girl. Her roles during training included Hester in The Deep Blue Sea, April in Company, Arkadina in The Seagull and Cassandra in The Trojan Women.

Elliott Rennie, who is composing the music for the production, was last seen in the West End in Shakespeare in Love and has recently performed in Pinocchio at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. He's also performed at Southwark Playhouse, Derby Theatre, MAC, Belfast, New Vic, Stoke and toured the UK and abroad with Les Enfants Terribles. Elliott has worked as a composer and M.D. at Derby Theatre, Soho Theatre and extensively with the National Youth Theatre.

Creative team:
Director: Kate Budgen
Writer: Cordelia O'Neill
Designer: Camilla Clarke
Movement Director: Lucy Cullingford
Sound Designer: Ella Wahlstrom
Lighting Designer: Sarah Readman
Production Manager: Richard Irvine
Stage Manager: Rachel Darwood
Producer: Philip Scott-Wallace for Small Things Theatre
Associate Producer: Audrey Thayer.

No Place For A Woman is A Small Things Theatre production in association with Theatre503.

Small Things Theatre's first play,The Stolen Inches, was a sell-out at the Edinburgh Festival in 2015. Their regular Night of Small Things in association with the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington provides a platform for emerging artists of all disciplines to showcase their work.

Kate Budgen - Director

Kate trained at Birkbeck College and on the NT Studio Directors course. She was Associate Director at Pentabus Theatre from 2008-2011 and Creative Associate at the Bush Theatre from 2010-2011. Selected directing credits include: Strong Arm (Underbelly/Old Vic New Voices), The Hairy Ape (Southwark Playhouse) Rigor Mortis (Papatango/Finborough), May Fair (Pentabus Theatre), Crossed Keys (Eastern Angles), Bedbound (Lion and Unicorn), Stoopud Fucken Animals (Traverse Theatre), There is a War (Arts Ed) Punk Rock (Guildford School of Acting), Anne Boleyn (RWCMD). She has worked as Assistant Director for The Gate Theatre, The Almeida, The Opera Group, Pentabus Theatre, the Bush Theatre and for Opera North. She was Associate Director on The Cripple of Inishmaan for the Michael Grandage Company in 2013. She is a Connections Director for the National Theatre Connections Festival and has been a visiting director at Arts Educational Schools, the Actors Centre and LAMDA.

Cordelia O'Neill - Playwright

Cordelia's first play, The Stolen Inches, premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2015. It was a sell-out and received 4-star reviews. Other writing credits include My ET, a short for Bites and Scratches at The Pleasance, Islington in 2015 and Living in the City With or Without Sex, a rehearsed reading of which took place at The Old Red Lion in 2014. She trained as an actress at The Oxford School of Drama.

Camilla Clarke - Designer

Camilla is a Set & Costume designer based in London. She trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, graduating in 2014 with First Class Honours in Theatre Design. In 2015 she was a winner of the Linbury Prize for Stage Design. Camilla was the recipient of the Prince of Wales Scholarship 2013, The Paul Klimpton prize for innovation in Design and The Lord Williams Memorial Prize for Design in 2014. Credits include: Wind Resistance, The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh; Human Animals, The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.

Lucy Cullingford - Movement Director

Lucy was movement practitioner in the Movement Department of The Royal
Shakespeare Company for two years and is currently Movement Director for The Tempest, directed by Greg Doran. Previous collaborations include Don Quixote, The Jew of Malta, working on David Farr's The Winter's Tale, Greg Doran's Hamlet, Loves Labors Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream (Courtyard Theatre). Lucy is currently Dance Repetiteur for the RSC's production of Matilda The Musical.

Ella Wahlstrom - Sound Design

Ella is a London-based Sound Designer and trained at Rose Bruford. She was an original sound operator of Complicite's The Encounter a Co-Sound Designer of Robert Wilson and Mikhail Baryshnikov's Letter to a Man and the Sound Designer of Esa-Pekka Salonen's cello concerto. Theatre Sound Design credits include: Peter Pan Goes Wrong (Mischief, West End), Three Generations of Women (Broken Leg Theatre Greenwich Theatre), The Life (English Theatre Frankfurt), The Ballad of Robin Hood (Tacit Theatre, Southwark Playhouse), The Bunker Trilogy, The Frontier Trilogy and The Capone Trilogy (Jethro Compton, Edinburgh Fringe and international touring), Empty Vessels (Rosemary Branch Theatre) Sirenia (Jethro Compton, Edinburgh Fringe), Klippies (Southwark Playhouse), Chicken Dust (Finborough Theatre) In Lambeth (Spellbound Productions, Southwark Playhouse), Carroll: Berserk (Spindrift Theatre, Drayton Arms Theatre), A Study in Scarlet (Tacit Theatre, Southwark Playhouse), Titus Andronicus (Hiraeth, Arcola), Romeo and Juliet (Hiraeth, Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Theatre Uncut (Theatre Uncut, Young Vic), The Revenger's Tragedy and Henry V (Old Red Lion Theatre). As Associate Sound Designer: Othello (Frantic Assembly), JOHN (DV8), The Cripple of Inishmaan (Michael Grandage Company).

Sarah Readman - Lighting Designer

Her recent credits include: Quarter Life Crisis (Oval House), Hikapee's Moonfall (Jacksons Lane), The Foley Explosion (Yard Theatre), The Tempest, Side Show and Punkplay (Southwark),

A Small Things Theatre production
in association with Theatre503

No Place for a Woman

by Cordelia O'Neill

Wednesday 3 May to Saturday 27 May

Press night is Monday 8 May at 7.45pm.

Tuesday - Saturday at 7.45pm
Wednesday matinee at 3.00pm
Pay What You Can
Saturday matinee at 3.00pm

Tickets: £15/£12
All Previews £10

THEATRE503
The Latchmere,
503 Battersea Park Road,
London
SW11 3BW

Box Office: 020 7978 7040
www. theatre503.com

How to get here:

Theatre503 is above the Latchmere Pub on the
corner of Latchmere Road and Battersea
Park Road

Tube:
Sloane Square then bus 319
South Kensington then bus 49 or 345
Vauxhall then bus 344

Rail: Clapham Junction (5 mins from Victoria or 7 mins from Waterloo) take Grant Road exit, then bus 49, 319, 344 or 345

Bus: 44, 49, 319, 344, 345 all stop outside the Latchmere

Car: Free local parking after 6pm

Social:

Twitter: @smallthingstc
#NoPlaceForAWoman

Instagram: @smallthingstheatre

Facebook: /smallthingstheatre

www.smallthingstheatre.com

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