Andrew French and Tessa Peake-Jones in rehearsals for While We're Here. Photo: Sam Taylor
Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them.
On the country’s southern margin where the towns give way to the English Channel, both search for the centre of their lives. Will they find a way to let go of the past for the sake of their futures?
Alice Hamilton’s productions of Barney Norris’s previous plays Visitors and Eventide for Up In Arms have been described as ‘heartbreaking’ (New York Times), ‘outstanding’ (Times), ‘astonishing’ (Evening Standard) and containing ‘all the still, sad music of humanity’ (Guardian).
A moving new play from acclaimed touring theatre company Up In Arms in co-production with the Bush Theatre and Farnham Maltings.
Supported using public funding from Arts Council England. Early development seeded by house.
Alice Hamilton is co-artistic director of Up in Arms. Work for the company includes German Skerries (Orange Tree), Eventide (Arcola and tour), Visitors (Bush, Arcola and tour), Fear of Music (tour with Out of Joint), Missing (Tristan Bates) and At First Sight(Latitude Festival and tour). Other directing work includes Orca (Papatango/Southwark Playhouse) and Orson’s Shadow (Jagged Fence/Southwark Playhouse). She worked as Staff Director on Man and Superman at the National Theatre, and has directed development workshops and rehearsed readings with the Royal Court, National Theatre, Salisbury Playhouse, and High Tide.
Barney Norris was born in Sussex in 1987. Upon leaving university he founded the touring theatre company Up In Arms with the director Alice Hamilton. His plays include Visitors (Up In Arms, Arcola, Bush and tour) and Eventide (Up In Arms, Arcola and tour). His first novel, Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain, is published by Doubleday, and he is also the author of a book on theatre, To Bodies Gone: The Theatre of Peter Gill, published by Seren. He won the Critics’ Circle and Offwestend Awards for Most Promising Playwright in 2014, was named as one of the 1000 Most Influential Londoners in 2015, and was the Literature nominee for the South Bank Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Award in 2016. He is the Playwright in Residence at Keble College, Oxford. Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain is currently Waterstone’s Book of the Month.
Dom Coyote‘s theatre credits as composer include: As The Crow Flies (Pentabus), The Borrowers (Sherman Cymru), Watership Down (Watermill Theatre), Minotaur, The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Unicorn Theatre), The Night Before Christmas (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Clause 39 (Salisbury Cathedral), Extraordinary Bodies (Cirque Bijou/Diverse City), Kes (CAST), Bridging The Gap (Bristol Green Capital). Theatre as Lead Artist includes: Songs for the End of the World (Battersea Arts Centre/West Yorkshire Playhouse/UK tour), The Story Fishers (National Theatre), Cape Sound Stories (Haus der Kulturen, Berlin), Folk In A Box (Sydney Festival/Venice Biennale). Dom is an associate artist of Kneehigh Theatre.
James Perkins’ theatre design credits include: While We’re Here (Bush Theatre); Sweet Charity and Little Shop of Horrors (Royal Exchange, Manchester); Skylight (Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Pilgrims (Hightide, Clwyd Theatr Cmyru, Yard Theatre); The Last Five Years (New Wolsey Theatre); German Skerries, Jess and Joe (The Orange Tree Theatre), The Gathered Leaves (Park Theatre); Breeders (St James Theatre); Shiver, Lost in Yonkers (Watford Palace Theatre); Ciphers (Bush Theatre/Out Of Joint); 1001 Nights (Unicorn Theatre/Transport Theatre); Liar Liar (Unicorn Theatre); Girl in the Yellow Dress (Salisbury Playhouse); Microcosm (Soho Theatre); Dances of Death (Gate Theatre); The Fantasist’s Waltz (York Theatre Royal); Stockwell (Tricycle Theatre); Carthage, Foxfinder, Events While Guarding The Bofors Gun, Trying (Finborough Theatre); The Only True History of Lizzie Finn, Floyd Collins (Southwark Playhouse); The Marriage of Figaro (Wilton’s Music Hall); The Life of Stuff, Desolate Heaven, Threads, Many Moons (Theatre503); The Hotel Plays (Grange Hotel); St. John’s Night, Saraband (Jermyn Street Theatre); Pirates, Pinafore (Buxton Opera House); Matters of Life and Death (Contemporary Dance UK Tour); Iolanthe, The Way Through The Woods (Pleasance Theatre, London); The Faerie Queen (Lilian Baylis, Sadler’s Wells); The Wonder (BAC). James created Story Whores. He is an associate of Forward Theatre Project and one third of paper/scissors/stone.
Victoria Smart’s theatre credits with Up In Arms: German Skerries (Orange Tree Theatre and tour). Theatre includes: Carnival Journeys (V&A/Complicite), The Last March (Exeter Bikeshed/Southwark Playhouse), Maria 1968 (Edinburgh Fringe), Enduring Song (Southwark Playhouse), Billy Chickens is a Psychopath Superstar (Theatre 503 at Latitude). As associate: Hysteria (London Classic Theatre), Pilgrims (Theatr Clwyd/High Tide/Vicky Graham Productions), Jess and Joe Forever (Orange Tree Theatre), P’yongyang (Finborough Theatre), Oliver! (Leicester Curve), Life Of Stuff (Theatre 503). Film includes: Nether, Transition. Victoria is part of an artist’s co-operative at Lewisham Arthouse. www.victoria-smart.tumblr.com
