RAINER Opens Arcola Outside For 2022

Writing from his own first-hand experiences in service and delivery jobs, Max Wilkinson wrote RAINER during lockdown in 2020 when the streets were apocalyptically quiet. The production opens the new summer season for the Arcola's acclaimed Arcola Outside space, after being developed through their Today I'm Wiser Festival in 2021.

Rainer is a solitary bicycle delivery rider, whizzing across London delivering food to whoever will summon her. From luxury flats to leafy suburbs, she loves to create stories in her head, re-imagining London as one of her favourite Sci-fi films or Scorsese's Taxi Driver. She loves her life. Until her one-time lover disappears and reality starts to slip.

Max is an award-winning script writer, fascinated with the blurred line between performance and theatre and characters navigating an increasingly absurd world. He has won the Screen to Screen Award, the Prix Royal and was a finalist for the Nick Darke Award, Theatre Uncut's Prize for Political Writing and recently, Samuel French's Off Broadway Award. He's had plays produced at Theatre 503, King's Head Theatre, the Arcola, Paines Plough and many others across London, and is working on his first commission for a feature film of his absurdist play, Ghost Fruit this summer.

Nico is a British-Indian-French director and ex-physicist. As a theatre director, he has worked at the Young Vic (Freshworks), the Seven Dials Playhouse, the Arcola, the Bunker Theatre, the Courtyard Theatre, the Blue Elephant Theatre and Theatre N16, his production of Diary Of A Somebody is currently playing the Seven Dials Playhouse. His debut film The Start of Nothing recently had its world premiere at BAFTA-qualifying London Short Film Festival 2021. He is also an actor, with credits in Hollywood, UK and European TV & Feature productions, as well as many UK Theatres.

Max Wilkinson said, "I've always wanted to make a 'City Play' or film, where the city and its residents are as important as the central character. Things like Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood, Goodbye to Berlin, Virginia Woolf, stuff like that. But also with this fierce but lonely, sort of wandering poet at the centre of it. I also spent a lot of my twenties, like Rainer, riding constantly around London at night between service and other jobs and you can't help day dream and mythologise the city just from boredom. The play was inspired and written during the first lockdown in London, where the streets were apocalyptically empty, save for hundreds of delivery workers riding back and forth across the city. I think it was the moment when these invisible people became more visible and 'unskilled' or 'service' workers became 'skilled' or 'vital'. The play is about that too: looking at this new class of workers and appreciating their importance.

WoLab is a working laboratory for artists to create. They provide performance makers of all experiences with the opportunity to have a go. WoLab trains, mentors, nurtures and creatively entitles artists, helping them discover and refine their talents, and then showcases those talents to the industry. Current work in development includes: ENG-ER-LAND by Hannah Kumari, touring to 30+ venues throughout Spring/Summer 2022; RAINER by Max Wilkinson, opening at Arcola Theatre in Summer 2022; Screwdriver by Eve Cowley and Elin Schofield, recently workshopped with Sheffield Theatres and Sheffield Royal Society For the Blind; A nightmare is witchwork by Billie Collins; In the Net by Misha Levkov; A Romantic Comedy by Tiwa Lade; TIGER by Tom Kelsey; Ostrich by Alistair Wilkinson; and The Director's Development Fund, in partnership with Hannah Joss and Stage Director's UK. Past work includes: First Commissions (Paines Plough); The Actor-Writer Programme (Theatre N16/Bunker Theatre); Man-Cub (RADA/King's Head); PlayList (King's Head); happy ever after? (Bunker Theatre); and R&D's of heavymetalsexyanimal by Sam Rees (Theatre Deli); Asperger's Children by Peter Machen (Trinity Laban); and We'll Be Who We Are by Naomi Obeng. RAINER is WoLab's first production in London since Man-Cub and hot off their tour of ENG-ER-LAND.

Performances run 1 - 18 June 2022.

Tickets: £25-£15 (concs) | www.arcolatheatre.com | 020 7503 1646