- Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen directs world premieres of Clarion and Shrapnel: 34 Fragments of a Massacre, two urgent plays about the press and military
- Max Stafford-Clark directs Robin Soans’ Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage – Arcola’s first co-production with National Theatre Wales and Out of Joint – which gets its London premiere after a UK tour
- Gillian Kirkpatrick and Beverley Klein star in Happy Ending, a new musical adapted from Anat Gov’s experience of cancer
- Olivia Poulet stars in the first major revival of Mark Ravenhill’s Product
- London premiere of Harry Melling’s peddling, UK premiere of Maria Milisavljevic’s Abyss and world premieres of The Singing Stones and Rose Lewenstein’s Now This Is Not The End
Arcola Theatre’s 2015 Winter/Spring season includes major productions about global politics and the state of the British media. Arcola continues to champion new writing with full stagings of nine original works.
Clarion (8 April – 16 May), a dark and timely new play about newspapers, free speech and the struggle for truth, gets its world premiere in a production directed by Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen. Written by former journalist Mark Jagasia, and developed at Arcola over two years, this is an insider’s story about the ethics of the press in modern Britain.
Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage (20 May – 20 June), directed by Max Stafford-Clark, is the story of two Welsh names bruised, but not beaten, by media speculation: Gareth Thomas, 100 caps for Wales, now the world’s most prominent gay sportsman; and his hometown, Bridgend. Receiving its London premiere after a UK tour, Robin Soans’ new play marks Arcola’s first co-production with National Theatre Wales and Out of Joint.
Product (27 April – 23 May) is Mark Ravenhill’s razor-sharp comedy about the media’s response to terrorism. Robert Shaw directs Olivia Poulet for the play’s first major revival.
Shrapnel: 34 Fragments of a Massacre (11 March – 2 April) pieces together one of the most controversial episodes in the ‘war on terror’. Directed by Mehmet Ergen, Anders Lustgarten’s startling new play dares to ask what a massacre is made of.
Taksim Square, written and directed by Mehmet Ergen, is a new musical about the small patch of land which sparked a national crisis, featuring songs from the 2013 protests in Turkey. It is performed in Turkish as part of the Orient Express season (12-24 January), which will once again showcase some of the best recent work from Talimhane Tiyatrosu, Arcola’s sister theatre in Istanbul.
Happy Ending (28 January – 7 March), directed by Guy Retallack and starring Gillian Kirkpatrick and Beverley Klein, is a powerful and uplifting musical adapted from the Israeli writer Anat Gov’s experiences of cancer.
peddling (4-28 March), Harry Melling’s poetic exploration of homelessness, gets its London premiere after acclaimed runs at the HighTide festival and off-Broadway.
Abyss (1 – 25 April), a poetic thriller for which Maria Milisavljevic won the prestigious German Kleist Award for Young Dramatists, receives its UK premiere.
The Singing Stones (4-28 February), a fearless portrayal of women in the Arab Spring, gets its world premiere.
Now This Is Not The End (3-27 June), Rose Lewenstein’s captivating drama about legacy, identity and our sense of belonging, is directed by Katie Lewis in the world premiere production.
Cinema (26-30 May), a new play about people trapped in political conflict, plays at Arcola as part of a UK tour.
The Story Project (6-10 January) returns with ten short plays on the theme of ‘Rage, Romance and Resolutions’.
Our Creative Engagement Winter Season includes:
Mahmud and Yezida (6-11 January), a classic of Turkish theatre directed by Aylin Bozok and performed in Turkish by Arcola Ala-Turka;
PlayWROUGHT (12-17 January): a festival of one-off rehearsed readings of twelve new plays selected from over a hundred submissions;
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (20-24 January) as performed by our new community performance company, Arcola Queer Collective;
Sex Workers’ Opera (26-29 January), a unique multimedia production written and performed by sex workers and their allies;
Kaleidoscope (31 January), a devised piece from Arcola 60+.
Tickets for all of these productions are now available at arcolatheatre.com, over the phone on 020 7503 1646, and in person at the Arcola Theatre box office.