Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol Announces Cast for WAITING FOR GODOT

Embarking on a new chapter in its history, Tobacco Factory Theatres has just announced the cast for Waiting for Godot, its first major solo production.

Seasoned stage actors Christopher Bianchi, Colin Connor, David Fielder and John Stahl will star in this iconic play and, in Bristol and as the production tours, a group of local boy actors will take on the role of The Boy. The production plays in Bristol from Thu 19 October - Sat 04 November and then tours to The Dukes Lancaster (Tue 07 - Sat 11 November) and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough (Wed 22 - Sat 25 November).

When it was first performed in Paris in 1953, Waiting for Godot shook the foundations of the theatrical landscape at the time. Brought to London by the late Sir Peter Hall, at its British premiere two years later, the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan remarked that the play had "changed the rules of theatre". Now, 65 years later, Waiting for Godot is as fresh and urgent as ever.

Tobacco Factory Theatres's production of Waiting for Godot will be directed by Mark Rosenblatt who was Associate Director at West Yorkshire Playhouse from 2013-2016. He was the Associate Director at the National Theatre Studio from 2011 to 2013 and ran Dumbfounded Theatre from 2001. In 1999 he won the JMK Award for Young Directors and he now serves as the JMK Trust's Vice-Chair.

"There aren't many plays that make a splash in popular culture...It's a high-wire act and yet it is written with such certainty and confidence, so precisely and with such brilliant comic patterns...it plays with the biggest universal ideas - hope, trying hard to get through life, filling time, purpose, wondering what it all means and how we use and abuse relationships. And yet, somehow - and I think this is where its magic really lies - it manages to do so in a way which resists explaining itself. It's rich and specific and inexplicably about everything and nothing." Mark Rosenblatt

Tobacco Factory Theatres is grateful to The JMK Trust who has worked in partnership with them to offer an Assistant Director Bursary to Chloe Masterton, a participant of the JMK Directors' Group in Bristol.

This production of Waiting for Godot marks a landmark moment for Tobacco Factory Theatres as a solo producer and looks ahead to the recently announced Factory Company season in spring 2018 and the creation by Tobacco Factory Theatres of its own company of actors.

For more information visit tobaccofactorytheatres.com.

Photo credit: Joe Roberts

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