Tag: Blog

Pitcairn is about Fletcher Christian’s attempt to build a new kind of society on a remote island – a society of equals with his fellow Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian lovers and followers. Here are some other Utopias: other attempts to start afresh, not by changing society from within but by carving out new lives in […]

See this show for £6. Use the code OOJ when booking. Performances at Greenwich Theatre on 9, 12 or 14 July  Book tickets.   Max Stafford-Clark and writer Stella Feehily are working with students from LAMDA drama school on their final year show – a major rewriting of the “lost” restoration comedy Love and a Bottle […]

Award-winning actress Stephanie Cole is much-loved for roles in Waiting for God, Tenko, Doc Martin, Open All Hours and most recently Coronation Street, as well as West End shows including Blythe Spirit and Noises Off. Here she talks about This May Hurt A Bit, our new comedy-drama about the NHS.

The incidental music in This May Hurt A Bit has been specially composed by Charlotte Hatherley. Charlotte has released three albums in her own name, was a member of rock band Ash for many years and more recently has played guitar on tour for Bat for Lashes and KT Tunstall. She also DJs. Here she […]

We asked the cast of This May Hurt A Bit: Why is this play important?  Stephanie Cole I’ve had a lot of contact with the NHS over the last few years – my husband dying of cancer, my mother of strokes, my brother has schizophrenia; so I’m very much aware that all is not well. […]

Hywel Morgan plays NHS founder Nye Bevan in This May Hurt A Bit. Here’s his personal rehearsal journey. ‘Aneurin Bevan?, Architect of the NHS and my political hero?! I’ll bite your arm off.’ That was what I told my agent before I’d even read Stella Feehilly’s script for ‘This May Hurt A Bit’. Despite having […]

Ciphers is inspired, in part, by the “spy in the bag” case from 2010. It’s a play about the kind of people who work in secret intelligence – the kind of people drawn to that kind of work, and their unknowability. But also, about the way we are all, in a way unknowable.  Here are […]

Recently we hosted a 5-day workshop, giving writers an opportunity to learn new techniques for devising theatre. Isabel Quinzaños reports: Over a few days in August, a group of budding writers, performers and directors got together at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to produce a script about both the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums. […]

James Perkins is the set designer for Ciphers. He has previously worked with director Blanche McIntyre on Liar Liar, The One True History of Lizzie Finn, and Dawn King’s previous play Foxfinder. What is the start of the process for designing a play? I read the script a couple of times before I start, and […]

Dawn King was first inspired to write Ciphers by the death of Gareth Williams, the GCHQ-employee who was found dead locked inside a bag in a Pimlico flat. Here she discusses the thoughts – and the play – that the case inspired; and some of her favourite writers.