The Donmar Warehouse today announces that Susan Wokoma, fresh from her acclaimed performance as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre and Channel 4's Year of the Rabbit, joins the cast of Teenage Dick in the role of Elizabeth York.

Susan, named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and listed in Forbes' 30 Under 30 in 2017, joins previously announced Daniel Monks, who also received praise this summer for his portrayal of Roger in Sydney Theatre Company's production of Lord of the Flies.

The Donmar also announces today it will be partnering with the London College of Fashion, UAL, for Lyndsey Turner’s production of Far Away by Caryl Churchill. Graduate students on the College’s MA Costume Design for Performance course will work with the Donmar to create the extravagant hats for Far Away’s renowned hat parade scene.

The Donmar will also work with 800 young people from schools across London during the two productions. Young people will create new work as they explore and respond to the themes of the plays.

Both productions will be on public sale from Wednesday 25 September at 9am online and 10am by phone or in person. Members can get priority booking from 17 September.

(Steel 10am Tuesday 17 September; Copper 12pm Tuesday 17 September; Friends 18 September 9am online and 10am by phone/in person)

Continuing its commitment to engaging new audiences, the Donmar is simplifying ticket access schemes with DONMAR DAILY RELEASE. This new scheme sees a minimum of 40 additional tickets released for sale every morning for performances seven days later. Audiences can sign up to receive information about productions and ticketing on the Donmar’s website, www.donmarwarehouse.com.

The Donmar’s successful free ticket scheme for those aged 16-25, YOUNG+FREE, will continue with Teenage Dick and Far Away offering seats for performances across the season with tickets released by ballot at the end of every month. YOUNG+FREE is funded through the generosity of audiences via the Donmar’s PAY IT FORWARD scheme. These donations have enabled the Donmar to allocate more than 18,000 free tickets to those aged under 26.

Before Teenage Dick and Far Away take to the Donmar stage, the UK premiere of Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Ola Ince, starring Monica Dolan and Steven Mackintosh, is currently running until 5 October 2019. The Donmar then stages [BLANK] a new play by Alice Birch in a co-production with Clean Break. [BLANK] will run at the Donmar Warehouse from 11 October – 30 November. Maria Aberg directs a cast including Kate O’Flynn, Jemima Rooper, and Jackie Clune and Zainab Hasan who both return to the Donmar following the Shakespeare Trilogy in 2016.


TEENAGE DICK

Written by Mike Lew
Friday 06 December 2019 – Saturday 1 February 2020

PRESS NIGHT: Thursday 12 December 2019

Director Michael Longhurst
Designer Chloe Lamford
Lighting Designer Sinéad McKenna
Casting Director Anna Cooper CDG

Cast includes Daniel Monks and Susan Wokoma.

As winter formal gives way to glorious spring fling, Richard – the class loser – lusts for power at Roseland High.

After years of torment due to his hemiplegia, Richard plots the ultimate rise in power: to become president of his senior class. But like all teenagers, and all despots, he is faced with the hardest question of all: is it better to be loved, or feared?

Mike Lew’s darkly comic take on Shakespeare’s Richard III has its UK debut. Donmar Artistic Director Michael Longhurst directs a cast including Daniel Monks as Richard and Susan Wokoma as Elizabeth York.
Mike Lew’s (Writer) plays include Teenage Dick (Ma-Yi at the Public and Artists Rep productions; Public Studio, O’Neill, OSF workshops), Tiger Style! (Olney, Huntington, La Jolla Playhouse, and Alliance productions; O’Neill and CTG workshops), Bike America (Ma-Yi and Alliance productions), microcrisis (Ma-Yi, InterAct and Next Act productions), Moustache Guys, and the book to the musical Bhangin’ It (Richard Rodgers Award; La Jolla Playhouse, Project Springboard, and Rhinebeck Writers Retreat workshops). He is a Tony voter, Dramatists Guild Council member, and a resident of New Dramatists. Mike’s honours include Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Ma-Yi and La Jolla Playhouse Artist-in-Residence, both with Rehana Lew Mirza; Lark Venturous and NYFA fellowships; and the PEN Emerging Playwright, Lanford Wilson, Helen Merrill, Heideman, and Kendeda awards. Education: Juilliard, Yale.

Michael Longhurst (Director) is an award-winning stage director and Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse. Michael’s inaugural production as Artistic Director, Europe by David Greig, opened in June 2019. Previously for the Donmar he directed the UK premiere of Amy Herzog’s Belleville, starring James Norton and Imogen Poots, in December 2017. His acclaimed revival of Caroline, or Change by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori transferred to Hampstead Theatre from Chichester Festival Theatre and then to the West End, and will head to Broadway in 2020. The production was nominated for three Olivier Awards, with Sharon D. Clarke winning the award for Best Actress in a Musical. Michael also directed Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre, which returned for its second celebrated run in the Olivier in early 2018. Michael’s Royal Court production of Nick Payne’s Constellations starring Sally Hawkins and Rafe Spall transferred to the West End, winning the 2012 Evening Standard Award for Best Play and receiving four Olivier Award nominations, and ran on Broadway starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson, who was Tony-nominated. He also directed Gyllenhaal in his American stage debut at the Roundabout Theatre, New York in Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet. Other theatre includes The Son (Kiln), Gloria (Hampstead Theatre), Bad Jews (West End, Theatre Royal Bath & UK tour), They Drink It In The Congo and Carmen Disruption (Almeida Theatre), ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore and The Winter’s Tale (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe), Linda, The Art of Dying, Remembrance Day (Royal Court), A Number (Nuffield & Young Vic), Cannibals (Royal Exchange, Manchester), The History Boys (Sheffield Crucible), Dealer’s Choice (Royal & Derngate), The World Of Extreme Happiness (NT Shed), Stovepipe (site-specific promenade with the National Theatre, HighTide & Bush Theatre, Sunday Times’ Top Ten Theatre Events of the Decade), Midnight Your Time (HighTide), On The Beach (Bush Theatre), On The Record and Gaudeamus (Arcola), dirty butterfly (Young Vic, winner of the Jerwood Directors Award), Guardians (Pleasance & Theatre503, Fringe First Award). Michael trained in directing at Mountview after reading Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 2015, the Evening Standard named him as one of the 1000 most influential Londoners.

Daniel Monks (Richard) makes his Donmar Warehouse debut in Teenage Dick. Earlier this year, he performed in William Golding's Lord of the Flies at Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Kip Williams, alongside Mia Wasikowska & Eliza Scanlen. In 2018, he was nominated for the Australian Academy Award (AACTA) for Best Lead Actor in a Film for his debut feature film Pulse, and received the Helpmann Award & Green Room Award nominations for Best Lead Actor in a Play for his Australian mainstage debut The Real and Imagined History of The Elephant Man, written by Tom Wright and directed by Matthew Lutton at Malthouse Theatre. He was a finalist for the 2017 Heath Ledger Scholarship and was nominated for Best Actor at the 2016 WA Screen Awards. In 2015, he received the Arts Award at the NSW/ACT Young Achiever Awards, and he was awarded the Young Filmmaker of the Year at the 2014 WA Screen Awards. As a filmmaker, he wrote, produced, edited and played the lead in the feature film Pulse, which won the Busan Bank Award at the Busan International Film Festival 2017; the first Australian film to ever do so. It also screened at BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival 2018, Sydney Film Festival 2017, and was the Centrepiece Film of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2017. He is a graduate of the Australian Film Television & Radio School (AFTRS), and his short films have screened at more than 50 film festivals worldwide. He is an Ambassador for the Starlight Children's Foundation, and in 2018, he was named the Ambassador for People with Disabilities Australia at the 40th Sydney Mardi Gras Parade.

Susan Wokoma (Elizabeth York) after appearing in the New York transfers of the acclaimed all-female productions of Julius Caesar and Henry IV, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, at St. Ann's Warehouse, Susan makes her Donmar debut with Teenage Dick. Her theatre credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream (Open Air Theatre), Labour of Love (Noël Coward), A Raisin in the Sun (Sheffield Crucible), Game, Dream Pill (Almeida), Hotel (National Theatre) and Three Birds (Royal Exchange, Manchester/Bush) for which she received an Offie Award nomination for Best Female Performance. Television credits include Year of the Rabbit, Chewing Gum, Crazyhead (for which she was selected by BAFTA as a Breakthrough Brit and won an RTS West award for Best On Screen Performance), and Porters.

TEENAGE DICK received its world premiere by Ma-Yi Theater Company; Ralph B. Peña, Producing Artistic Director, June 20, 2018 at The Public Theater, New York, NY.

TEENAGE DICK was developed during a residency at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference in 2016. Preston Whiteway, Executive Director; Wendy C. Goldberg, Artistic Director.


FAR AWAY

Written by Caryl Churchill
Thursday 06 February – Saturday 21 March 2020

PRESS NIGHT: Wednesday 12 February 2020
Director Lyndsey Turner
Designer Lizzie Clachan
Lighting Designer Peter Mumford
Sound Designer Christopher Shutt
Casting Director Anna Cooper CDG

You’ve found something secret. You know that don’t you?

In a cottage far away, a child wakes to the sound of screaming.

Who will tell her what’s really going on?

And where will the discoveries she makes that night take her in the years to come?

Caryl Churchill’s dazzling play about a world sliding into chaos receives a new production at the Donmar, twenty years on from its explosive premiere. Lyndsey Turner directs.

Caryl Churchill (Writer) has written for stage, radio and television. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge's Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year. She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups 'Joint Stock' and 'Monstrous Regiment'. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980.
Top Girls (1982) was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982 and transferred to Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994). Her plays for television include The AfterDinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca's Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her new version of August Strindberg's A Dream Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005. Her plays since then have included Seven Jewish Children - a play for Gaza (2009), Love and Information (2012), Ding Dong the Wicked (2013), Here We Go (2015) and Escaped Alone (2016). Caryl Churchill lives in London. Her play Escaped Alone (2015) premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in January 2016 and transferred to New York, and her most recent plays Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp premiere at the Royal Court this year.

Lyndsey Turner’s (Director) previous work at the Donmar includes Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Fathers and Sons, Faith Healer and Aristocrats. Her other theatre credits include Top Girls, Saint George and the Dragon, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Edgar and Annabel, There is a War (National Theatre), Girls and Boys (Royal Court), Tipping The Velvet (Lyric Hammersmith), Hamlet (Barbican), Chimerica (Headlong, Almeida & West End).

Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX
www.donmarwarehouse.com

Box Office: 020 3282 3808 (No booking fees, £1 postage fee may apply)
Telephone Mon-Sat 10am-6pm
In person Mon-Sat, 10am-curtain up (with some exceptions, see website)

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