Surviving school as a fat kid is tough enough. When your Mum's a teacher, it's hell. What's more, Anna's Dad is obsessed with saving the world and her maverick uncle Terry is dossing on the couch.
When Anna hits back at the bullies, she finds herself suspended from school and stuck at home with hapless Terry trying to save her. But Terry needs saving himself, and as the bond between the two deepens, Anna finds herself swept up in a friendship she can't live without.
Nick Payne won the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright 2009.
Emma has been an Associate Artist of the Bush Theatre and her credits here include Three Birds, Where’s My Seat, Like A Fishbone, The Whiskey Taster, If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, 2nd May 1997, Apologia, The Contingency Plan, Wrecks, Broken Space Season, 2000 Feet Away, My Romantic History and Tinderbox.
Theatre credits include Great Expectations (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Elizabeth (Royal Opera House), The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe (Birmingham Rep), The Oresteia (Home Theatre, Manchester), Wuthering Heights, The Merchant Of Venice, Consensual (NYT), The Effect (Sheffield Theatres), Henry The Fifth (Unicorn Theatre, Imaginate Festival), All My Sons (Talawa Theatre, UK Tour), Hello/Goodbye, The Blackest Black, #aiww: The Arrest Of Ai Wei Wei, Lay Down Your Cross, Blue Heart Afternoon (Hampstead Theatre), Each His Own Wilderness, Widower’s House (Orange Tree Theatre), Accolade (St James Theatre), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (Royal Exchange, Royal And Derngate And Northern Stage), Pitcairn (Out of Joint, Chichester Festival Theatre & UK Tour), Saints (Nuffield), The Colby Sisters Of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Tricycle Theatre), Pests (Clean Break, Royal Exchange & Royal Court), Carthage (Finborough Theatre, Coriolanus, Berenice, The Physicists, Making Noise Quietly, The Recruiting Officer (Donmar Warehouse), All My Sons, A Doll’s House, Three Birds, The Accrington Pals, Lady Windermere’s Fan (Royal Exchange), Much Ado About Nothing (Old Vic), Nut (National Theatre), OMG! (Sadlers Wells, The Place & Company Of Angels), There Are Mountains (Clean Break, HMP Askham Grange), The Promise (Donmar Warehouse at Trafalgar Studios), You Can Still Make A Killing (Southwark Playhouse), The Sacred Flame (English Touring Theatre), Black T-Shirt Collection (Fuel UK Tour and National Theatre), Invisible (Transport UK Tour & Luxemborg), Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndhams Theatre, West End), Precious Little Talent (Trafalgar Studios), Charged (Clean Break, Soho Theatre), Men Should Weep (National Theatre), Travels With My Aunt (Northampton Theatre Royal), Sisters (Sheffield Theatres), Pornography (Birmingham Rep/Traverse and Tricycle Theatre), Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (National Theatre), Europe (Dundee Rep, Barbican Pit).
Emma is the Associate Sound Designer for the National Theatre’s production of War Horse. She won the Falstaff Award for Best Sound Design/Original Score for her work on Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse in 2014.
Josie is the Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre.
Josie trained with directors Peter Gill, Michael Grandage, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Sam Mendes. Before coming to the Bush she worked for five years as a freelance director and was the Associate Director of Sheffield Theatres and Trainee Associate Director at the Royal Court.
At the Royal Court she directed CRAZYBLACKMUTHFUCKIN'SELF by Deobia Oparei and LOYAL WOMEN by Gary Mitchell. At Sheffield, she directed WORLD MUSIC and THE UNTHINKABLE by Steve Waters; MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, THE LONG AND THE SHORT AND THE TALL by Willis Hall and KICK FOR TOUCH by Peter Gill. She was the tour director of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES by Eve Ensler. At the Young Vic, she directed MY DAD'S A BIRDMAN by David Almond. For the Royal Shakespeare Company she directed BELIEVE WHAT YOU WILL and KING JOHN (RSC Complete Works). She has directed the 24HOUR PLAYS at The Old Vic Theatre and in New York. For the Donmar Warehouse Josie has directed FRAME 312 by Keith Reddin, WORLD MUSIC by Steve Waters and THE CRYPTOGRAM by David Mamet. For The Bush, Josie has directed HOW TO CURSE by Ian McHugh, TINDERBOX by Lucy Kirkwood, APOLOGIA by Alexi Kaye Campbell, 2,000 FEET AWAY and LIKE A FISHBONE by Anthony Weigh. Recent work outside the Bush includes TWELFTH NIGHT and THE TAMING OF THE SHREW for Chicago Shakespeare Company and MEN SHOULD WEEP at the National Theatre. Forthcoming work includes MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Lucy has previously designed Wrecks, Broken Space Festival, 2,000 Feet Away, Tinderbox and The dYsFUnCKshOnalZ for the Bush Theatre (with whom she is a former Associate Artist).
Recent theatre credits include Twelfth Night for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; Dreams of Violence (Out of Joint); Shades for the Royal Court’s Young Writers Festival; Macbeth (Edinburgh Lyceum/Nottingham Playhouse); Nina and Gas Station Angel (repertoire, LAMDA); Timing (Kings Head) and When Romeo Met Juliet (BBC)
She designed Artefacts (Nabakov Theatre Company / Bush Theatre) and Some Kind of Bliss (Trafalgar Studios), both of which transferred to the 2008 ‘Brits off Broadway Festival’ in New York and other theatre credits include Be My Baby (New Vic Theatre); Rope (Watermill Theatre); Closer (Theatre Royal Northampton); The Long and the Short and The Tall (Sheffield Lyceum); The Prayer Room (Birmingham Rep/Edinburgh Festival); Ship of Fools (set, Theatre 503); The Tempest (set, Box Clever National Tour); The Unthinkable (Sheffield Crucible Studio); Almost Blue (Riverside Studios, winner of Oxford Samuel Beckett Trust Award); Dr Faustus (The Place); Touch Wood (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Breaker Morant (Edinburgh Festival); Richard III (Cambridge Arts); Flight Without End, Lysistrata, Othello (LAMDA); Generation (Gate Theatre) and Season of Migration to the North (RSC New Writing Season).
Lucy graduated from Motley Theatre Design School in 2003, having also gained a BA in Fine Art from the University of Newcastle.
Theatre credits include Julius Caesar, The Drunks ,The Grain Store (RSC), The Contingency Plan (Bush Theatre), Mary Stewart ( Hipp theatre, Sweden); Hedda Gabler ( Gate Theatre Dublin);Happy Now? (Cottesloe NT); Private Lifes and The Giant (Hampstead theatre); Endgame (Everyman Liverpool); Far From The Madding Crowd ( ETT tour); Lady From The Sea and She Stoops To Conquer (Birmingham Rep); The Elephant Man ( Lycium Sheffield & Tour); Kean (Apollo theatre, West End); Glass Eels ,Comfort Me With Apples ( Hampstead theatre);Jack and the Beanstalk (Barbican Theatre); Pure Gold ( Soho Theatre) Henry V ,Mirandolina and A Convseration (Royal Exchange); Terms of Enderment ( Tour);Restoration (Bristol Old Vic and Tour for Headlong); My Fair Lady (Cameron Mackintosh/National Theatre Tour production); The Caretaker ( Tricycle Theatre), Comedy of Errors, Bird Calls , Iphigenia (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield); The Doll?s House (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Sunshine on Leith (Dundee Rep & Tour):Heartbreak House (Watford Palace) A Model Girl(Greenwich theatre) The Solid Gold Cadillac (Garrick Theatre, West End); The Secret Rapture (Lyric Shaftesbury Avenue); Noises Off , All My Son?s , Dr. Faustus (Liverpool Playhouse); On The Piste ( Birmingham Rep); The Chairs ( Gate theatre); Follies ,Insignificance and Breaking the Code (Theatre Royal, Northampton) Tartuffe , The Gentleman From Olmedo, The Venetian Twins, Hobson?s Choice, Dancing at Lughnasa, Love in a Maze (Watermill Theatre); Fields of Gold , Villette (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Cinderella (Bristol Old Vic); Hysteria and Children Of A Lesser God (Salisbury Playhouse).
Opera credits include: Samson et Delilah, Lohengrin (Royal Opera House); The Trojan Trilogy and The Nose (Linbury ROH);The Gentle Giant (The Clore ROH); The Threepenny Opera (for the Opera Group); L’Opera Seria (Batignano Festival)
Theatre includes What's Wrong With Angry (St Andrews Theatre), Sisterly Feelings, (Riverhouse Barn), Our Time (Leatherhead Theatre).
TV includes The Hub.
Film includes Blood The Last Vampire, Wasted Lives
Theatre includes Rhinoceros (Royal Court) The Arsonists (Royal Court) Who?s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (Royal Exchange Manchester), Pravda (Chichester Festival Theatre/Birmingham Rep) Martha Loves Michael (Ruffian/Pleasance) The Norman Conquests (Birmingham Rep.) Hobson?s Choice (Touring Consortium/Birmingham Rep/Plymouth Royal)Flip Fest (Contact Theatre Manchester), Death of a Salesman (Manchester Library) Adam Geist (Royal Exchange Manchester) Deep Blue Sea (Nottingham Playhouse)Mad For It (Royal Exchange Manchester) The Tempest (Contact Theatre
Manchester) Wildest Dreams( Manchester Library) Life of Galileo (Manchester Library)One Day In October (Riverside Studios) Hunting Scenes From Lower Bavaria (Gate Theatre)
Television includes Doctors, Being Human, Silent Witness, The Children, The Bill, Holby City, The Last Detective, Miss Marple, Of My Thumbs, The Eleventh Hour, Wire In The Blood, Dalziel and Pascoe, William and Mary, The Royal, Stretford Wives Bob and Rose, In Deep, City Central, Heartbeat, The Grand II, Grafters, McLibel!, See You Friday, This Life, Hillsborough, London?s Burning, Julius Caesar
Film includes Vacuuming Completely Nude In Paradise
Theatre includes Hello and Goodbye (ATG), Alaska (Royal Court), John Gabriel Borkman (Donmar Warehouse), The Knight of the Burning (Young Vic), Just a Bloke (Royal Court), Prayer for Owen Meany (National), Nicholas Nickelby (Lyric Hammersmith)
TV includes Desperate Romantics, Marple, Rather You Than Me, He Kills Coppers, Dracula, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Chatterley Affair, Cracker, The Romantics, The Rotters Club, The Lion in Winter.
Film includes Scouting Book For Boys, Hot Fuzz, A Good Year, The Last Drop, Kidulthood, Green Street, Shaun Of The Dead, The Calcium Kid, Beginners Luck, Out of Control.
Theatre includes Serious Money (Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Stephen & The Sexy Partridge
(Old Red Lion); Some Trace Of Her (Royal National Theatre); Natural Selection (Theatre 503); Women of Troy (Royal National Theatre); Kindertransport (Shared Experience); You Might As Well Live (Pleasance Courtyard/New End Hampstead); Mariana Pineda (Arcola); The Kiss (Hampstead Theatre); Flanders Mare (Sound Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing (Salisbury Playhouse); Design For Living, Fight For Barbara, Betrayal (Theatre Royal Bath / Tour); Julius Caesar (Cynergy Theatre Company at Wandsworth Prison); Man of Mode (Northcott Theatre Exeter); The Country Wife (Sheffield Crucible); The Yellow Wallpaper (This Collective tour); Paradise Syndrome (Man in The Moon); Buddy's Song (New Victoria Theatre Stoke on Trent).
TV includes Doctors, Hotel Babylon, Life Begins, Coupling, Ny-Lon, Black Books, Watermelon, The Pooters, Extremely Dangerous, The Dark Room, Close Relations, The Peter Principle, Wycliffe, Tears Before Bedtime, The Bill, Casualty, In your Dreams.
Films include A Bunch of Amateurs; Trouble Brewing(short); Run, Fat Boy, Run; That's For Me; Max; Checkout Girl (short); Suburban Psycho (short); What Rats Won't Do.
