Ellen McDougall’s inaugural season as Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre concludes with Effigies of Wickedness (Songs Banned by the Nazis), a riotous cabaret performance, which is already shaping up to be such a box office hit that an extension to the run has been announced prior to the production opening, with further tickets released due to popular demand. This exciting collaboration between the Gate Theatre and English National Opera, is directed by McDougall and opens on 3 May (press night 14 May) and will now run until 9 June.

As the Nazis identified difference as something to be afraid of, the Weimar Kabarett scene danced on with songs that celebrated it. With music from Brecht and Weill to Schoenberg, this subversive underground scene was bursting at the seams with brilliant, visionary artists. No surprise then, that they were censored, exiled and incarcerated shortly after as ‘degenerates’. And their songs have been all but lost since.

Ellen McDougall, talking about the collaboration, said ‘It has been enormously exciting to make a collaboration with ENO, an organisation over 30 times our size, and whose Artistic Director Daniel Kramer previously directed groundbreaking productions of Hair and Woyzeck for the Gate. Working together means we can make a production of much bigger scope – including a live, 4-piece band and 4 incredibly talented performers. It is a testament to the incredible songs from the Weimar Kabarett scene that the project has attracted such a wealth of talent to both make and perform in the piece – including Christopher Green, Seiriol Davies, Le Gateau Chocolat and Lucy McCormick. Our season will end with a defiant musical celebration of difference, diversity, and freedom of expression.’

The unique event brings together several figures in the London theatrical and cabaret scene who between them have originated a variety of highly-praised individual projects. Lyricist[JR1] Seiriol Davies is the brains behind the breakout fringe hit that transferred to the Young Vic How to Win Against History (‘A work of genius’ – The Telegraph*****) while Lucy McCormick’s Triple Threat used cabaret to scandalously retell the New Testament, becoming one of the most talked-about shows of the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe (*****, Time Out).

Le Gateau Chocolat’s ‘life-enhancing, roof-lifting cabaret’ (The Stage) performances have been a cabaret favourite for years, but he has also brought his talents to bear with London’s larger theatre companies, including appearances in Rufus Norris’ Threepenny Opera (National Theatre, 2016) and Emma Rice’s Twelfth Night (The Globe, 2017). Christopher Green’s multifaceted and always provocative work has taken in stage hypnotism, drag, music hall and most recently the conceptual show about pornography at Southbank Centre, transferring to the New York Guggenheim Museum, Prurience.

Baritone Peter Brathwaite has been working with the music banned by the Nazis for years, with his show Degenerate Music premiering in 2014 at the London Song Festival. Effigies of Wickedness represents the full development of the ideas and songs he has been performing since then. Also appearing is mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, a singer with ENO and other UK opera companies. She has been seen in ENO’s sensational production of Akhnaten and in the children’s opera The Way Back Home.

Cast - Peter Brathwaite, Katie Bray, Le Gateau Chocolat (not 18 & 19 May) and Lucy McCormick
Musicians – Geri Allen, Cassie Kinoshi and Fra Rustumji

A co-production by the Gate Theatre and English National Opera.
at the Gate Theatre 3 May – extended until 9 June (press night 14 May)

Directed by Ellen McDougall
Designer - Ellan Parry
Arranger - Corin Buckeridge
Dramaturg - Christopher Green
Lyrics – Seiriol Davies from literal translations by David Tushingham
Musical Director – Phil Cornwell
Movement Director - Malik Nashad Sharpe
Lighting Designer - Azusa Ono
Sound Designer - Dan Balfour
Assistant Director - Leo Skilbeck
Assistant Designer - Lynne Morris


Katie Bray
Consistently earning praise for her outstanding stage presence and vocal performances, British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray has fast established herself as an artist to watch. Recent roles for Opera North include Hansel Hansel and Gretel, Rosina Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Nancy Albert Herring and she has also sung for English National Opera (Daughter Akhnaten and The Way Back Home), Scottish Opera (Lucilla La Scala di seta), Garsington Opera (Zulma L’Italiana in Algeri and Zaida Il turco in Italia), Opera Holland Park (Mallika Lakmé), English Touring Opera (Minerva Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Satirino La Calisto) and at the Grimeborn Festival (Charlotte Werther).

Equally at home on the concert platform, Katie Bray has performed in prestigious venues such as Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, and the Holywell Music Room and she appears regularly in the London English Song Festival, where she directed concerts at Wilton’s Music Hall, as well as at the Oxford Lieder Festival for which she recently recorded a disc of Schumann songs with Sholto Kynoch. She is particularly noted for baroque repertoire and has appeared with Barokksolistene and Bjarte Eike, Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, La Nuova Musica, Ludus Baroque and Spira Mirabilis.

Katie Bray graduated as a Karaviotis Scholar from the opera course at the Royal Academy of Music, and was awarded the Principal’s Prize and won First Prize in the Richard Lewis Singing Competition.

Highlights of the 2017/18 season include a return to Opera North as Louis XV
Chair/Female Cat/Owl L’enfant et les sortilèges and Lola Cavalleria Rusticana, her debut with Welsh National Opera as Zerlina Don Giovanni, and concerts with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra.

Peter Brathwaite
Manchester born baritone Peter Brathwaite graduated with a first-class degree in Philosophy and Fine Art from Newcastle University and holds a Master’s with distinction from the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Russell Smythe at the RCM International Opera School. He continued his training at the Flanders Opera Studio, Ghent. He is the recipient of a 2016/17 International Opera Awards Bursary and the 2016 English Touring Opera Chris Ball Bursary.Other prizes include a Peter Moores Foundation Major Award and an Independent Opera Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Churchill Fellow, and an alumnus of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.
Opera roles include Yamadori Madama Butterfly and Marcello La Boheme (Nederlandse Reisopera); Kaidama Il Furioso All’Isola Di San Domingo, L’incognito L’Assedio Di Calais, Elviro Xerxes, Silvano La Calisto and Schaunard La Boheme (all English Touring Opera); L’incognito L’Assedio Di Calais (Armel Festival Opera, Budapest); Sid La Fanciulla Del West (Opera Holland Park), and Nelson Porgy & Bess (Opéra de Lyon). His world premieres include Billy Bone in Lynne Plowman's Captain Blood’s Revenge (Glyndebourne); Luis in Randal Corsen’s Katibu Di Shon under Ed Spanjaard at the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam (Nederlandse Reisopera); Mimoun in Emily Howard's Zatopek! at Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and recorded on the NMC label); Mr Lancashire in David Stoll's The Drummer Boy of Waterloo for Jubilee Opera at Aldeburgh, and Shakespeare settings by Alex Silverman for What You Will (Shakespeare's Globe), directed by Mark Rylance. His other performances in contemporary repertory include the demanding role of Jean in Philippe Boesmans' Julie for Operastudio Vlaanderen and premiere music by Orlando Gough in Othello at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Roles at the Royal College of Music included Nardo La Finta Giardiniera , Papageno Die Zauberfloete and Demetrius A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Brathwaite recently performed Mozart arias in televised concerts with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tonu Kaljuste, and has appeared as a soloist with the London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and BBC Concert, in venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican, Birmingham Symphony Hall and deSingel, Antwerp. Festival appearances include Aldeburgh, Edinburgh International, Brighton, London Handel and Britten100 at BAM, New York. He has performed in recital at London Song Festival, Bridgewater Hall, the Elgar Room (Royal Albert Hall) and the Opera Vlaanderen with pianists including Graham Johnson and Alisdair Hogarth. Peter Brathwaite is the creator of the multimedia recital Degenerate Music: Music Banned by the Nazis. In collaboration with pianist Nigel Foster and digital artist James Symonds, the programme of previously banned works has been performed across the UK and recently toured to Studio Niculescu, Berlin.
In 2017/18 he sings Papageno Die Zauberflote at the Soho Theatre and on a tour of the UK, returns to the Spitalfields Music Festival for Feldspar Fogonogo including performances at Luxemburg, Hamburg, Denmark and London, Warder in Philip Hagemann’s The Dark Lady of Sonnets for Pegasus Opera, Effigies of Wickedness at the Gate Theatre and Cacambo Candide for West Green House Opera. Further ahead he makes his role debut at La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels in a new production directed by Ivo van Hove.

Le Gateau Chocolat
Le Gateau Chocolat's work extends beyond the world of drag performance - he has a busy career in the field of contemporary opera and performance. Le Gateau Chocolat's work as a solo artist began in 2011 when he debuted his first solo show in Adelaide Fringe which then went on to tour the world as part of different festivals; Edinburgh Fringe and a subsequent run at Menier Chocolate Factory London, Wroclaw in Poland, Christchurch, Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney Opera House. Since then he has worked with an Olivier award winning circus (La Clique/La Soiree) and alongside contemporary composers - specifically Julian Philips (Varjak Paw ROH) Jonathan Dove (Tobias and The Angel Young Vic), Jocelyn Pook (Ingerland at ROH) and Orlando Gough a collaborator on Black (Imago, Glyndebourne.) He has sung at Wigmore Hall and with Basement Jaxx at The Barbican. 3 subsequent solo shows have been made since the first; I heart Chocolat; Royal Albert Hall, In drag; A Royal Festival hall commission for the Purcell Room, and most recently Black, a Homotopia Festival commission which has played Liverpool and London’s Soho Theatre. Most recently, he joined the cast of Porgy and Bess at Regents Park Opera directed by Tim Sheader. He also sang as part of the flotilla for the Queen's Jubilee, again working with composer Orlando Gough. Balladeer/Pastor Kimble, Threepenny Opera (National Theatre), The Bear / The Proposal (Young Vic) Feste in Twelfth Night, Emma Rice's final Shakespeare production at the Globe and Uncle/The Duke in The Black Rider for Malthouse and Victorian Opera, Melbourne.

Lucy McCormick
Lucy McCormick is an actor/performer based in London.
Her hit show Triple Threat, took the Edinburgh Fringe by storm in 2016 and had a sell-out run at the Soho Theatre in 2017.
Her other theatre credits include: Collective Rage (Southwark Playhouse); Roller Diner (Soho Theatre); Cinderella (Oxford Playhouse); The Naked Truth (National Tour); First Love is the Revolution (Soho Theatre); Big Hits (International Tour); SPLAT! (Barbican); Violent Incient (Arnolfini Bristol); External (National Tour); Dusa, Fish, Stas, Vi (Worksworth Festival); As You Like It (Worksworth Festival/Jagged Fence Productions); The House of Bernada Alba (Tristan Bates Theatre)

Lucy won the Dublin Fringe Best Performer Award, Glasgow's Brick Award and the TV Bomb Groundbreaker Award for her show Triple Threat. She was further nominated for Emerging Artist at the Total Theatre Awards Edinburgh Festival. She has also received a Off West End Award nomination for Best Female for her role in Collective Rage.


CREATIVE TEAM

Ellan Parry - Designer
Ellan Parry trained at Wimbledon and Motley, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Brighton. They are a previous winner of the Jocelyn Herbert Award and a Linbury Prize finalist. Current design work includes Hamlet and As You Like It at Shakespeare's Globe. Recent work includes the Olivier Award-winning Rotterdam (Trafalgar Studios and the Arts Theatre, West End, and 59E59 Theaters, New York), Belongings (Glyndebourne Youth Opera), The Magna Carta Plays (Salisbury Playhouse), Peter Pan (Exeter Northcott), Posh (Nottingham Playhouse, Salisbury Playhouse) and The Miser (The Watermill Theatre). Recent opera and music theatre includes La Liberazione di Ruggiero (Brighton Early Music Festival), El Niño (Spoleto Festival, Charleston S.C.), Neige (Grand Theatre de Ville, Luxembourg), Noye's Fludde (Southbank Centre), The Fairy Queen (Brighton Theatre Royal) and Without You (Menier Chocolate Factory, & Panasonic Theater, Toronto). Alongside their design career, Ellan has a personal practice as a multi-disciplinary artist, presenting live art performances and installations at various platforms and events in the UK and Europe.

Christopher Green - Dramaturg
Christopher Green is a theatrical and broadcast provocateur. His experiential theatre credits as creator, writer, and director include: Prurience: an experiential entertainment about porn, which was performed at the Royal Festival Hall at the Southbank Centre July 2017 and transferred to the Guggenheim in New York March 2018 (the Guggenheim’s first theatrical commission), VIP, The Frozen Scream (co-written with Sarah Waters) and Office Party (co-created with Ursula Martinez, directed by Cal McCrystal)
Christopher is the author of Overpowered: The Science & Showbiz of Hypnosis. He is a trained hypnotherapist and has reinvented the stage hypnotism routine in his theatre show The Singing Hypnotist. This was developed when he was the first Artist in Residence at The British Library in 2012. Christopher was the curator of Victorian Popular Entertainments: There Will Be Fun! at the British Library which ran from 2016-2017. He scripted the material for his own repertory company of performers to support the exhibition.
Christopher regularly writes for BBC Radio 4, including 9 series of Tina C and many radio plays. His most recent is How Success Ruined Me, a two hander with entertainment legend Roy Hudd about music hall singer, Fred Barnes. Christopher’s previous radio drama series The Experience of Love, a five-part series exploring queer history in the late 20th Century, is now being developed for television.
He performs as characters such as country music singer, Tina C. who has recently published her autobiography, Complete & Utter Country, rapping pensioner Ida Barr and cultural critic Jedd O’Sullivan. Christopher has won multiple awards the first being the Olivier award for Best Entertainment in 2004 and the most recently, best Cabaret Show at Brighton Festival 2017.
Christopher’s works in development include Music Hall Monster: The Insatiable Mr Fred Barnes for production at Wilton’s Music Hall in May 2018, a commission from the Gate Theatre, London and the large-scale immersive show, The Home, in association with Entelechy Arts and The Albany for production in 2019.
Christopher is an Artistic Associate of Alexandra Palace, Wilton’s Music Hall, Duckie, Entelechy Theatre Company, and Creative Cowboy Films (Australia)

Phil Cornwell – Musical Director
Theatre credits include – As Musical Supervisor Rent 21st Anniversary Tour. As Musical Director In The Heights (Kings Cross Theatre/ Southwark Playhouse), The Scottsboro Boys (West End). As Assistant MD A Damsel In Distress (Chichester Festival Theatre) Carousel (Arcola Theatre), The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic), Singin’ in the Rain (West End), Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (UK Tours), Evita (European Tour), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (UK Tours and Singapore Esplanade Theatre).
Phil trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, then at Trinity College of Music, where he was awarded the Postgraduate Accompanist Prize. He has performed piano concertos in St John’s Smith Square and Southwark Cathedral. Phil is a member of the highly regarded contemporary folk band Apple of my Eye (on double bass and vocals), and also a regular collaborator with singer and composer Tasha Taylor Johnson.

Seiriol Davies – Lyrics from literal translations by David Tushingham
Seiriol is a musical theatremaker who trained at the London International School of Performing Arts. He has made shows with companies like Punchdrunk, You Need Me, Gideon Reeling and Beady Eye. He was half of the cult time-travelling knees-up variety act Underbling and Vow, and writes songs with the dark glam, Weimar-fabulous band Temper Temper.
His first full-length play Moon River, an unsettling comedy about the social lives of the over-70s, was developed by the Soho Theatre and produced at the Pleasance and he later devised, composed and performed Mess with Caroline Horton, which won The Stage Award for Best Ensemble, 2012 and toured internationally.
Seiriol’s first musical How To Win Against History, about Henry Cyril Paget, the cross-dressing black sheep Marquis of Anglesey, opened at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe to critical acclaim, and played two consecutive total sellout runs there in 2016 and 2017. It then toured the UK before transferring to a sellout run at London's Young Vic in December 2017. It has won several awards including a The Stage Award and the Wales Theatre Award.

Corin Buckeridge - Arranger
Corin’s composition for theatre includes; Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (Old Vic); Closer, The Late Middle Classes; Hamlet (Donmar); Arcadia (West End/Broadway); Jumpers (RNT/Broadway); The Alchemist, King John, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, King Baby, Transit of Venus, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, A Warwickshire Testimony (RSC); Our Lady of Sligo (NT); The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Taming of the Shrew (Globe), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Hay Fever, As You Like It, King John (Rose, Kingston); Antony and Cleopatra, The Power and the Glory, Arcadia, Warrior, Blithe Spirit (Chichester Festival Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Design for Living, Don Juan (ETT); Twelfth Night (Regents Park) Volpone, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar (English Shakespeare Company).
Opera includes: On the Road with Ron and Ros (Modern Music Theatre Troupe/Purcell Room/UK tour); Bathtime (ENO/Baylis programme); Angela (Rosemary Branch/Third Hand Opera company);
Composition for film includes: Connected, Brothers of War, and many short films for London Film School and Mountview Film School.
As arranger: The Noël Coward Songbook (Ian Bostridge/EMI), The Wars of the Roses (Kingston), Aladdin, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk (Lyric Hammersmith). Work as Musical Director includes: Fosse (European Tour/ Japan Tour), Chicago (London) Hairspray (London). Associate MD for: (all London) Legally Blonde, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Book of Mormon, Matilda.
Assistant MD: Doctor Dolittle (Hammersmith Apollo), Kiss Me, Kate (Chichester/Old Vic), Kinky Boots (Adelphi. MD for plays includes: Marianne Dreams (Almeida); The Taming of the Shrew, A Jovial Crew (RSC); The Silver Tassie (NT).

Malik Nashad Sharpe – Movement Director
Malik Nashad Sharpe is a London-based choreographer and dancer making performances under their alias Marikiscrycrycry. Operating with an expansive and emotional choreographic proposition, their work is about the socially radical practice of imagining new worlds; dances that motorise the conditions necessary for possibility and futurity; performances that double as survival rituals; performances that drip with meaning, texturising all the affective and infective material left behind. Their work integrates pessimism and optimism, minimalism and maximalism, soft and sweet, hyperreal and absurdist ontological propositions with various dance and choreographic practices. Their identity is often central to their work as the site and receptacle of maintained racial and gender based violence, frequently recalling, reneging, and reifying their experiences being Black, Vincentian/Caribbean-American, gender non-conforming, femme, Queer, immigrant with a felt transgenerational history of displacement, alienation, and allostatic load, in order to humanise another possibility, worlds of ulteriorly.
They have performed their work in various venues across the UK, USA, and Canada, and have been supported by Arts Council England, Canadian Council for the Arts, a-n, Fierce Festival, Hackney Showroom, Chisenhale Dance Space, Live Art Development Agency, and Marlborough Theatre and Pub, and have performed with various artists like Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Rachael Young, Project O, SPIT!, Randy Reyes, Dalston Ballet, amongst many others. They’ve also taught workshops and courses around their dance practice at University of Illinois (USA), Glasgow School of Art (UK), Otion Front Studio (USA), The Workroom (UK), Gibney Dance (USA), Goldsmiths University (UK), CLOUD at Danslab (NL), Leeds Beckett University (UK), Tate Modern (UK), and School of New Dance Development (NL). Their newest work (in collaboration with Ellen Furey), SOFTLAMP.autonomies premieres at Theatre La Chapelle (CA) in April 2018.

Azusa Ono – Lighting Designer
Recent design credits include: Kairos (V&A Museum); Becoming Invisible (Bascule Chamber-Tower Bridge); Smack That (National tour); Killer (Shoreditch Town Hall); Darkness Darkness (Nottingham Playhouse); Cuttin’ It (Young Vic / National tour); The Tiger's Bones and Other Stories (Nottingham Lakeside / National tour); I Know All The Secrets In My World (Derby Theatre, then tour); Dot, Squiggle and Rest (Royal Opera House – Clore Studio); Peddling (New York 59E59 / National tour); Playland (Derby Theatre / National tour); How Nigeria Became a Story and a Spear that Didn't Work (Unicorn Theatre); We Are Proud…(Bush Theatre); The Lovesong of Alfred J Hitchcock (Curve Theatre Leicester / International tour); Copyright Christmas (Barbican Centre); Fanfared (Crucible Sheffield) and Choreogata (Southbank Centre – Purcell Room) https://www.ald.org.uk/azusaono

Dan Balfour – Sound Designer
Theatre as Sound Designer: Great Apes, I Call My Brothers, Caught (Arcola); #Dracula (The Curve); Seafret (Old Red Lion, HighTide); Figures Of Speech-Series (Almeida); Great Expectations (Merton Arts Space); Spindrift (Theatre Royal Plymouth); RE: Home (Yard Theatre); DREAM, Jenufa–Opera Works (ENO); Walking the Tightrope (Theatre Delicatessen), SOLO (Bush); Nude (Hope Theatre), Deathwatch (Roundhouse); The Dumb Waiter, Woyczek (Old Nick Theatre). Theatre as Associate Sound Designer: Fanny & Alexander, The Lorax-Toronto Tour (The Old Vic); People Places & Things (Headlong UK Tour); Life Of Galileo (Young Vic); Oresteia (Almeida); Frogman (Traverse Theatre); Sex With Strangers (Hampstead Theatre); How I Hacked My Way Into Space (Unlimited Theatre).

Ellen McDougall - Director
Ellen McDougall is Artistic Director at the Gate Theatre. Previous credits at the Gate include - The Unknown Island (2017) and Idomeneus (2014). Other credits include a critically acclaimed production of Othello at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe, the Lyric’s annual pantomime – Aladdin by Joel Horwood (2016) and Cinderella by Tom Wells (2015), The Rolling Stone (Orange Tree Theatre and Manchester Royal Exchange), The Remains of Maisie Duggan (Abbey Theatre, Dublin), The Glass Menagerie (Headlong), Anna Karenina (Manchester Royal Exchange), Henry the Fifth, Not Now Bernard, The Nutcracker, Antigone and Philoctetes (Unicorn Theatre); Glitterland (Secret Theatre/Lyric Hammersmith) and Ivan and the Dogs (Actors Touring Company/Soho Theatre). Later this year, she will direct The Wolves as part of Nadia Fall’s inaugural season at Theatre Royal Stratford East.
McDougall was formerly part of the Secret Theatre Company at the Lyric Hammersmith, Associate Director at the Gate, and an Associate Artist at ATC. She trained as an assistant to Katie Mitchell and Marianne Elliott and was Director in Residence at the NT Studio. She was awarded an International Artists' Development Award (ACE/British Council) in 2012; she was the runner up in the JMK Award 2008 and directed A Kind of Alaska at BAC. Her production of Ivan and the Dogs (Actors Touring Company/Soho Theatre) was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2011.

Lucy J Skilbeck – Assistant Director
Lucy J Skilbeck is a writer and director and Genesis Future Director at the Young Vic. Their debut play JOAN, a drag king play (winner of Fringe First, Stage Edinburgh and Spirit of the Fringe Awards) is currently touring internationally.
Lucy is the Artistic Director of Milk Presents, an Associate Company of Derby Theatre and the Bush Theatre. Milk Presents enable audiences to queer their world and are quoted by The Stage as making ‘Theatre that flies in the face of convention’. The company make theatre, run workshops, club nights, community projects, gender access training and artistic disruptions.
Lucy is the recipient of a BBC Fellowship and BBC Legacy Award. Their work often forefronts trans and queer narratives, and their latest play BULLISH, commissioned by the Jerwood Home Run Commission at Camden People’s Theatre, premiered to a sell-out run, and is touring the UK in Autumn 2018.
Directing credits for theatre include: The Bear / The Proposal (Young Vic), JOAN (Milk Presents and Derby Theatre); BULLISH, Bluebeard, A Real Man’s Guide to Sainthood, Milk Presents Self Service (Milk Presents); Penelope Retold (Caroline Horton and Derby Theatre); 3 Wise Monkeys (Hiccup Theatre) and The Secret Keeper (co-director, Angela Clerkin and Oval House),
As Associate / Assistant Director: Herons, dir. Sean Holmes (Lyric Hammersmith), The Complete Deaths dir. Tim Crouch (Spymonkey), The Odyssey, Brassed Off dir. Sarah Brigham (Derby Theatre); Islands dir. Omar Elerian (Bush Theatre); Father Christmas, dir. Emma Earle (Lyric Hammersmith, West Yorkshire Playhouse). Encourage The Others dir. Lu Kemp (Almeida Projects); Epidemic dir. Alex Ferris (Old Vic New Voices).

Fra Rustumji – Musician
Fra Rustumji is a London-based violinist and violist. She performs variously as a soloist and chamber musician, and has a particular passion for multi-disciplinary projects. Her performances as principal violinist for Shadwell Opera have won critical acclaim and she is also a principal player in the Multi-Story Orchestra, a Peckham-based orchestra whose aim is to bring classical music into unexpected places.
Fra has recently finished touring the U.K. with Joss Arnott Dance Company, for whom she performed 'V' for solo viola and solo dancer by James Keane. Fra has recorded music for productions at the Royal Court, and the National Theatre for their production of 'Consent', as well as for BBC documentaries and such artists as Femi Temowo and Engines Orchestra. She has also covered the on-stage role of 'Cat' in Julian Philips' opera How the Whale Became at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House.
Fra also works closely with poets, and is curating a weekend of poetry and live classical music concerts in Peckham this season. The summer will also see her performing as guest violinist with the Tritium trio at Dartington International Summer School and Festival, as well as chamber music festivals across the U.K and Europe.
Fra read music at King's College, Cambridge before completing her Master's with Krysia Osostowicz at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London in 2013.

Cassie Kinoshi – Musician
Cassie Kinoshi is a London-based composer, arranger and alto saxophonist known for her work with jazz septet Nérija, Afrobeat band Kokoroko and her own large ensemble Seed. Alongside working frequently within the world of jazz music and live performance, Cassie has also written for short film and videogame as well as professional classical ensembles such as the Benyounes Quartet and members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Her most recent ventures include currently partaking in the London Symphony Orchestra's renowned Panufnik Scheme 2018-19, a Sound and Music funded series of events with her ensemble SEED (Driftglass) and working as the sole composer for The Old Vic Theatre's professional development programme 2016-17. Notable artists Cassie has worked alongside include Zoe Rahman, Nathaniel Facey, Yazz Ahmed and Laura Jurd. In 2012 Cassie was shortlisted for the BBC Young Composer of the Year award and recently won the Parliamentary Jazz Award 2017 (Best Newcomer) as part of the ensemble Nérij.

Geri Allen – Musician
Geri Trained at East 15 Acting School. Theatre Includes: Smitty in How to Succeed without Really Trying (Wilton’s Music Hall); Mrs Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol the Musical (Brewhouse Theatre); Mabel Taliafero in Luna Park (Tristan Bates Theatre); Aveline/Rosamund in Stoat Hall (Eastern Angles Theatre, Tour); Miss Lynch in Grease the Musical (Scandinavian Tour); Mrs Clipstone in Danny the Champion of the World (UK Tour); Polga in Cinderella and the Glass Slipper (Hertford Theatre); Peggy in Godspell (Allstar Productions); The Woman in Double Exposure (Phoenix Artist Club); Toad in Wind in the Willows (UK tour); Narrator/Little John in Robin Hood (UK tour). TV Includes: Mother in Groupon Summer (Brands2Life); Woman in Gaining Pounds –Go Compare (Fold 7), Nancy in The Voice (Divertizma Productions); The Mistress in Pescatore’s Dog (Fold Up Productions), Emma in Swinging Radio England (Greene HD Productions), Jillian in The Bill (ITV) Cabaret Includes: Bebe and Luna Present…The Cabaret Farce! (Edinburgh Fringe Festival) Twitter: @GeriAllen80


Effigies of Wickedness (Songs Banned by the Nazis)
3 May – 9 June at 7.30pm

Captioned performance on 31 May

Tickets £15 previews, £27.50 (£20 concessions)
Wicked Friday: Limited £15 tickets released every Friday
for the following week’s performances.
Phone 020 7229 0706
Online gatetheatre.co.uk


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