13 November 2023
Newsdesk
Next year will begin in January Studio 1 with a re-discovered classic from Offie winning Two’s Company. Don’t Destroy Me is the 1956 debut from pioneering Jewish writer Michael Hastings (Tom and Viv, Lee Harvey Oswald, The Emperor) about Jewish refugees in post-war London directed by Tricia Thorns.
An Arcola co-production with Run At It Shouting follows in February with When You Pass Over My Tomb. Playwright Sergio Blanco, the most performed Spanish playwright in the world, and director Daniel Goldman return to the theatre after the success of their critically acclaimed Offie award winning productions of Thebes Land and The Rage of Narcissus for a story of love and lust beyond the grave.
Creative Works will take to the stage in March with The Improvised Play which will leave the show’s theme entirely up to the audience each night. Two of the UK’s most experienced and hilarious improvisers Lola-Rose Maxell (Starstruck, The Now Show, They Seem Nice) and Charlie Kemp (White Gold, Man Down, Austentatious) lead the cast.
A lesser explored classic follows in April with a production of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo from Boy Next Door Productions. Directed by Eduardo Barreto, this is the play Williams called his ‘love-play to the world’ and looks at hope and love in a Sicilian-American community on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana.
The UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’s The Book of Grace opens in May directed by Femi Elufowoju jr. (The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives). This visceral family portrait set on the Texas-Mexico border reveals a divided nation and gains timely new resonance from its 2010 debut as the world watches its own borders.
Finally in Studio 1, the winner of the 2023 Papatango New Writing Prize, Some Demon by Laura Waldren from Olivier Award-winning Papatango Theatre Company begins in June. Sam and Zoe are thrown together in an eating disorder unit and form a complicated bond threatened by the arrival of a new patient in this powerful and compassionate piece.
Over in Studio 2, to round out 2023, We Light Up The House present Protest Song by Tim Price. This alternative Christmas tale follows Danny who bonds with a group of protestors while sleeping rough. Inspired by real-life events, this funny, savage solo play questions society’s norms and how we can change them.
January kicks off with hit Edinburgh Fringe show Spin from 3 Hearts Canvas. Written by Kate Sumpter and directed by Sarah Jane Schostack, this solo show is darkly comedic takedown of a capitalist society obsessed with attaching morality to our bodies - all performed on a spin bike. Also in January, Rachel Thomas presents The Last One by Zoe Alker and directed by Imy Wyatt Corner, following 24-year-old Bess Malone as she navigates the impact of climate change and grief in her coastal hometown.
Late January and into February. Lightbox Theatre Company presents Broken Water. Written by Michèle Winstanley and directed by Nicola Samer, this acclaimed piece traces three women’s experiences of motherhood. Developed at Arcola as part of the 2014 Playwrought Festival, the play was shortlisted for the 2013 Verity Bargate Award and the 2017 Nick Darke Award
Pleasance theatre will bring Land of Lost Content by Henry Madd to the Arcola in late February. Directed by Nic Connaughton, this compassionate, funny and deeply moving play follows a friendship from adolescence to adulthood in a small town.
The first play from innovative acting studio Actors East Theatre, Casserole will begin in March. Developed over five years of improvisational workshops, this blisteringly funny and emotionally raw play looks at how grief causes people to hide from each other in a relationship. Created by Kate Kelly Flood (Dear England, I hate Suzie), Dom Morgan and James Alexandrou (Eastenders, Romeo and Juliet - Shakespeare's Globe) who also directs.
Another Edinburgh Fringe hit will take to the Arcola stage in April. Life with Oscar is written and performed by Nick Cohen who plays 29 characters from his time trying to make it big in Hollywood, which is directed by Nicholas Pitt. Also in April is the unique solo musical What (Is) A Woman by Andrée Bernard and directed by Michael Strassen. Set over four decades, this original solo musical is a woman’s story of love, laughter and what it is to be a woman in the modern day.
In May, Collide Theatre in partnership with Elizabeth Filippouli and in association with Arcola Theatre will present A Thousand Ships. Based on Natalie Hayne’s 2019 groundbreaking novel, this adaptation by Quentin Beroud and Emily Louizou and directed by Emily Louizou, retells the mythology of the Trojan war from the perspective of the women involved.
In June, Surrender is the result of a collaboration between Writer Sophie Swithinbank and Director/Performer Phoebe Ladenburg. Mother is in prison. Daughter has come to visit. Closely watched by security personnel, they have 45 minutes. A trained actor, and quick-witted, Mother tries to keep things light… but the darkness rises up around them as they are forced to confront the disorienting series of events that led them here.
Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen said: “We’re really looking forward to this new season of theatre at Arcola. It features a diverse range of productions, from here at home in the UK and overseas, with artists assembling from across the globe. Get ready for a radical season of trailblazing theatre that tackles topics as far ranging as you can imagine."
The Arcola Theatre Arcola commissions and premieres exciting, original works alongside rare gems of world drama and bold new productions of classics. The socially-engaged, international programme champions diversity, challenges the status quo, and attracts over 65,000 people to the building each year. Ticket prices are some of the most affordable in London, and our long-running Pay What You Can scheme ensures there is no financial barrier to accessing the theatre.
* The below shows are taking part in the multi-buy offer:
Don’t Destroy Me
When You Pass Over Me
Some Demon
Protest Song
The Land of Lost Content
Spin
A Thousand Ships
Casserole
Life with Oscar
The Improvised Play
Surrender
The pricing is as follows until 31st December:
Book 2 shows and save 10%
Book 3 shows and save 15%
Book 4 shows and save 20%
Listings information
Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL
www.arcolatheatre.com | 020 75031646
STUDIO 1
10 January - 3 February 2024 | Press Night: Friday 12 January 2024
Two’s Company presents
Don’t Destroy Me
By Michael Hastings | Directed by Tricia Thorns
Two’s Company arrives with another of their acclaimed re-discoveries, the 1956 debut by Michael Hastings (Tom and Viv, Lee Harvey Oswald, The Emperor), a bitter-sweet story of Jewish refugees in post-war London.
It’s a day of excitement. Young Sammy comes to live with his father and stepmother, 15 years after they escaped as refugees from Nazi Europe. Arriving as a new-born baby he was raised by an aunt in Croydon and now comes to London to start work as an apprentice. Nervous but full of hope, he soon finds that life in the rackety Jewish household is different from what he expected …
7 February - 2 March 2024 | Press Night: Monday 12 February 2024
Arcola Theatre and Run At It Shouting present
When You Pass Over My Tomb
By Sergio Blanco | Adapted by and directed by Daniel Goldman
Three ghosts meet in a theatre. The first ghost says...
“Do you know the story of the playwright who died for love?”
Sergio Blanco and Daniel Goldman return to the Arcola Theatre, after the success of their critically acclaimed OFFIE award winning productions of Thebes Land and The Rage of Narcissus, to tell a story of love and lust beyond the grave.
Flitting between fact and autofiction, three recently deceased actors take on the roles of political exile, medical pathologist and Sergio himself to recount one man's search for meaning as he careers between a life changing decision and an unspeakable act of consummation.
Desire, friendship and eroticism intertwine in this dazzling new play by one of the world's most performed writers, that asks, how far would you go for love? And will the world allow it?
5 - 9 March 2024
Creative Works presents
The Improvised Play
Lola-Rose Maxwell (Starstruck, The Now Show, They Seem Nice) and Charlie Kemp (White Gold, Man Down, Austentatious) bring you ‘The Improvised Play’. What would you like to see, a family drama set in a bank in the 80s? A political thriller in Miami the 2060s? Or a farce on a piece of cheese in the 1600's? Where, when and what's called is entirely up to you and completely different every night. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to see two of the most experienced and hilarious improvisers in the UK doing something truly original.
4 April - 11 May 2024 | Press Night: Wednesday 10 April 2024
Boy Next Door Productions presents
The Rose Tattoo
By Tennessee Williams | Directed by Eduardo Barreto
The Rose Tattoo is Tennessee Williams’ “love-play to the world,” about finding hope in unexpected places, and the chance of finding love again after a broken heart. Williams depicts with humour and satire a Sicilian-American community on the Gulf Coast while asking the public to keep an open mind to the possibility of miracles. This particular play is also an in-depth exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and the themes of loneliness and isolation through loss, grief and despair after the death of her husband and subsequent miscarriage. It’s a wonderful, profound study of the female psyche which Williams was very good at. Serafina is an immigrant uprooted from her origins who has gone in search of a better life in a country that has a dysfunctional relationship with immigrants. A parallel reality to what we are experiencing today in UK and all over the world. Almost as if Humanity no longer has new stories to tell: that we are all addicted to a repeated pattern. The majority of the characters in The Rose Tattoo are Sicilians but Southern Sicilians may come from varied cultural backgrounds: The Sicilians who are Carthaginians (from Carthage, a part of Tunisia), Phoenicians (from what is now Lebanon) and the few North African Berbers, Travellers and Cypriots are the ones this production wishes to focus on. Most of us are foreigners still adjusting ourselves to a culture that finds itself in the middle of an identity quandary: In our current world – a world which promotes isolation – finding love in the heart of a great battle becomes the ultimate test. We are all misfits to whom love is the only salvation.
13 May - 8 June 2024 | Press Night: 21 May 2024
Arcola Theatre presents
The Book of Grace
By Suzan-Lori Parks | Directed by Femi Elufowoju jr
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ visceral family portrait reveals a divided nation.
"Sometimes the alien is right in your own home. Sometimes right in your own blood. And you’ve got to build a wall around it."
Grace lives with her husband Vet, a patrol officer on the Texas-Mexico border. When Vet is awarded a medal for his service, Grace invites his estranged son Buddy to join them at the ceremony. But Buddy arrives armed with resentment, an ultimatum and (several) hand grenades. Can Grace heal the rift, and contain the threat?
Suzan-Lori Parks’ (Topdog/Underdog; Father Comes Home From The Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3) explosive 2010 play gains timely new resonance as the world watches its own borders. Award-winning director Femi Elufowoju jr (The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives) directs the UK premiere.
13 June - 6 July 2024 | Press Night: 17 June 2024
Papatango Theatre Company presents
Some Demon
By Laura Waldren
Sam’s eighteen and her life’s about to start. Zoe’s forty-something and hers never did. They don’t have much in common. Just a love of 80s' new wave, and an illness that wants them dead. Thrown together in an eating disorder unit, their most intimate secrets exposed, they form a complicated bond. When another patient turns the ward into chaos, they face questions that dictate their survival. Most of all: how to navigate an institution that keeps you safe inside but unable to cope outside? Grippingly authentic, incisively witty and profoundly compassionate, Laura Waldren’s remarkable debut won the Papatango New Writing Prize from 1,468 plays.
STUDIO 2
12-23 Dec, 3-6 Jan | Press Night: Thursday 14th December 2023
We Light up the House presents
Protest Song
By Tim Price | Directed by Sarah Bedi
What happens when you wake up to find yourself surrounded by protestors? This alternative Christmas plays features Danny who sleeps rough on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Then one morning he finds a canvas city being erected in front of him: Danny is swept up in the Occupy movement of 2011. The protestors nourish him, not just with food. He’s handed a microphone and people listen to what he has to say. In his own words, he is, “finally in. Connected. Affecting others.”
Protest Song is a fictional play inspired by real events. Whether you are a campaigner or an eye-roller, Tim Price's funny and savage solo play will leave you questioning our society’s norms and how we can change them when - after all - we’re only human.
9 - 20 January 2024
3 Hearts Canvas presents
Spin
By Kate Sumpter | Directed by Sarah Jane Schostack
Performed on a spin bike, this London premiere, solo show is a darkly comedic takedown of a capitalist society obsessed with attaching morality to our bodies. Spoiler Alert: It’s our society.Join an aspiring spin instructor as her enthusiastic attempts to create the perfect class are derailed by a forced journey of self-discovery. What starts as your average spin class, featuring tight lycra and sexy beats, soon gets weird(er?). The Instructor has big questions to ask: Is the industry she loves actually helping people? Why can’t she remember that weird dream? Does anyone else hear screams of terror? Performed on a spin bike, this London premiere, solo show is a darkly comedic takedown of a capitalist society obsessed with attaching morality to our bodies. Spoiler Alert: It’s our society.
23 - 27 January 2024
Rachel Thomas presents
The Last One
By Zoe Alker | Directed by Imy Wyatt Corner
‘Slowly the seasons merge. Boiling in April, raining in August. You can’t predict two good days in a row, can’t predict a good day from a bad one. Then it’s hot, too hot. All the ice cream melts down to their elbows before they get back to their towels. So, she drives a little bit closer but eventually she finds there is nowhere to park. All the usual little bits of the beach they sit on have been gobbled up by the sea’.When 24 year old Bess Malone steals from the local ice cream van she doesn’t expect it to impact her life at all. She doesn’t expect that soon she’ll be able to reel off every ice cream flavour there is or that she’ll know all the tunes an ice cream van can play, and she certainly doesn’t expect to find a new friendship with the van’s owner Brian.In a place and time not so unimaginably different from now, due to unreliable British Summertimes and rising sea levels in coastal towns, the ice cream man has become extinct. Shifting between surreal narration and the very real world of Bess in her hometown as she processes her despair at the ever-altering world around her, Bess finds herself increasingly drawn from her place as an outsider to someone at the heart of her community, through the ripple effects of something much bigger than herself. An honest look at climate change, grief, and changing landscapes in British seaside towns, Cornish playwright Zoe Alker’s new play asks why we ignore the signs the weather is sending us, and what life on the British coastlines could look like if we do.
Content Warnings: Contains themes and discussion of grief and loss (Sound & Light related content warnings TBC)
30 January - 24 February 2024 | Press Night: Wednesday 1 February 2024
Lightbox Theatre Company Presents
Broken Water
By Michèle Winstanley | Directed by Nicola Samer
This acclaimed play from Michèle Winstanley traces three women’s experiences of motherhood. Linda wants what her neighbours have. Philippa wonders what to do with her empty nest. Olive misses her absent son. Three women from very different walks of life, who only have one thing in common, the sacrifices they have made for family. A humorous, touching and insightful story about the highs and lows of life’s greatest celebrations and darkest tragedies. Broken Water shines a light on the untold experiences and the irrepressible resilience of women. Developed at Arcola as part of the 2014 Playwrought Festival, the play was shortlisted for the 2013 Verity Bargate Award and the 2017 Nick Darke Award. Now it premieres in a powerful new production from director Nicola Samer.
27 February - 2 March 2024 | Press Night: Wednesday 28th February 2024
Pleasance Theatre presents
Land of Lost Content
By Henry Madd | Directed by Nic Connaughton
Welcome to Dulowl, home to pubs, drugs, and unreliable buses. These bored friends are just trying to make the best of it. So, what went wrong? A compassionate, funny and deeply moving take on life in a small town. Land of Lost Content is an empowering story about friendship, adolescence, and life not going to plan. Henry and Jake grew up with their mates in a quiet country town called Dulowl. A town where they forged friendships in bad habits and damp raves as they stumbled through adolescence looking for something to do. Then Henry moved away. Now he’s back but there’s no enjoying a welcome-home-pint without facing up to the memories he left behind. A compassionate, funny and deeply moving take on life in a small town.
5 - 30 March 2024 | Press Night: Thursday 7 March 2024
Actors East Theatre presents
Casserole
By Kate Kelly Flood, Dom Morgan, James Alexandrou | Directed by James Alexandrou
The first play by innovative London acting studio "Actors East", developed over 5 years of improvisational workshops, "Casserole" (Co-written by Kate Kelly, Dominic Morgan, and James Alexandrou) is a blisteringly funny and emotionally raw 1-act play that looks at how grief causes people to hide from each other within a relationship.Can love exist between two people with diametrically opposing views on the afterlife? On the night Kate is set to pick up an award for her music video producing, Dom is at home getting stoned, fixing a bike, and defrosting a Casserole - which is fine as Kate isn’t due back until tomorrow… but Kate’s had another panic attack - convinced her dead mother is sending her signs, and comes back to get Dom's help to understand what it all could mean? Only to find Dom eating the biggest sign yet - the last casserole her mother ever made.
2 - 20 April 2024 | Press Night: Wednesday 3rd April 2024
Golden Idol Productions presents
Life With Oscar
By Nick Cohen | Directed by Nicholas Pitt
Actor/Filmmaker Nick Cohen relives his desperate Hollywood years - a tragicomic true-life ‘Sunset Boulevard’, living as a permanent guest on Sunset with a double Oscar-winner; a man who worked regularly with Orson Welles, promising to get Nick’s film nominated. Life with Oscar upends La La Land in a confessional rollercoaster ride through its dark, twisted underbelly.A frenetically physical retelling, featuring 29 different characters, from the man who modelled the Oscar trophy itself to the psychopathic producer’s daughter destined to be Nick’s ‘mystic bride,’ we go from Edgware rd. to Hollywood and back again. Accompanied by fragments of films past and present, scored with layered compositions by Jon Ouin and the cinematic direction of Nicholas Pitt, this show is a hilarious and moving confession. A Faustian tale of pre #MeToo Hollywood, where predators and victims are sometimes hard to distinguish, or one and the same. A deepening spiral of desperation, delusion and debt littered with metaphorical, and occasionally, real, corpses.
23 April - 4 May 2024 | Press Night: 24 April 2024
Jacqueline Ruth Grad presents
What (Is) A Woman
By Andrée Bernard | Directed by Michael Strassen
A unique solo musical with an original script, nine original songs and an original under-score throughout, What (is) A Woman is a one woman show of astounding inventiveness, where the singular actress plays all the men.What (is) A Woman, set over four decades, is a woman’s story of love, laughter and those invited along for the ride. This brand new play takes us on a thrilling, hilarious and familiar journey that resonates with every single gender. The piece, speaks directly to audiences of today, heralding what it is to be a woman in an era of empowerment with raw, authentic and uninhibited writing. It is, at its’ heart, a very human journey.
22 May - 15 June 2024 | Press Night: 28 May 2024
Collide in partnership with Elizabeth Filippouli and in association with Arcola Theatre present
A Thousand Ships
By Natalie Haynes | Adapted by Quentin Beroud and Emily Louizou | Directed by Emily Louizou
“Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
Thank you Homer, but now the muse - or shall we just call her the storyteller? - will take over and write a new poem about this old tale of love, vengeance and heroism. Soot from the fallen city of Troy still rains on the beach where the women gather, to be divided up among the victorious men. They are just the spoils of war, another trophy for a conquering hero to enjoy. Natalie Hayne’s A Thousand Ships broke new ground, telling the Trojan War from the perspective of the women at the centre of it. Tracking back to the origins of the war, and following the consequences to the bitter end, A Thousand Ships showed that female heroism was woven into every fibre of the story. From the terrible vengeance of Queen Hecabe, who’s lost everything except her thirst for retribution, to the three Goddesses whose rivalry started it all (or did it?), A Thousand Ships re-imagines the lives of the women - victims, heroes, killers - that were left out of Homer’s Iliad. An all-female chorus of just three invites you to an epic new show which transcends time and space, blending humour and tragedy, inventive storytelling, and Collide’s (“clearly a company to keep an eye on”, The Guardian) signature dream-like aesthetic.
19 June – 13 July 2024 | Press Night: 21 June 2024
Produced by Hannah Farley-Hills for HFH Productions
Surrender
By Sophie Swithinbank in creative partnership with Phoebe Ladenburg | Directed by Phoebe Ladenburg
Mother is in prison. Daughter has come to visit. Closely watched by security personnel, they have 45 minutes. A trained actor, and quick-witted, Mother tries to keep things light… but the darkness rises up around them as they are forced to confront the disorienting series of events that led them here. Surrender takes us on the blurry and sleep-deprived journey of a flawed woman trying to survive in a punishing and dysfunctional system that has separated her from her daughter. Thirteen years later, they have forgotten how to love each other… and this is their last chance to connect.
Surrender is the result of a collaboration between Writer Sophie Swithinbank and Director/Performer Phoebe Ladenburg. Drawing on Phoebe's early experiences as a mother, Surrender investigates Kate's journey of submission in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, not through the lens of marriage, but through the lens of motherhood.
Brought to you from the team behind the multi award-winning Edinburgh Fringe sellout, Bacon!
