Damola Adelaja (Tommy) in Parliament Square. A Bush Theatre and Royal Exchange co-production. Photo: The Other Richard
Kat gets up one morning, leaves her family behind and travels to London to carry out an act that will change her life and, she hopes, everyone else’s. For those it touches, their lives will never be the same. But what, in the end, are the real consequences of her actions?
Raw, disturbing and compassionate, James Fritz’s searingly powerful play forces a confrontation with some of the most urgent questions we face. What can one individual do to effect change? And where do we choose to draw the line between absolute commitment and dangerous obsession?
Parliament Square won the Judges’ Award in the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and will be directed by Jude Christian whose credits include Lela and Co and Bodies both at the Royal Court.
Amy Hailwood‘s credits as a theatre director include: Come Closer: Memories of Partition (Royal Exchange Theatre); Joy Unspeakable (Octagon, Bolton); Faraway, So Close (The Old Fire Station, Oxford). Amy is a member of the Open Exchange Network, the Royal Exchange’s network dedicated to developing emerging artists and was the Observer Director on A Streetcar Named Desire at the Royal Exchange in 2016.
Ben and Max Ringham‘s previous work for the Royal Exchange Theatre includes: Our Town, Persuasion, The Mighty Walzer. This is their first production at the Bush Theatre. Other recent theatre includes: The Pitchfork Disney (Shoreditch Town Hall); Lunch & The Bow of Ulysses (Trafalgar Studios); The Dresser (Duke of York’s); After Miss Julie (Theatre Royal Bath); Doctor Faustus (Trafalgar Studios); The Maids (Trafalgar Studios); Deathtrap (Salisbury Playhouse); The Government Inspector (Birmingham Rep); Raz (Assembly Theatre/Riverside Studios); Queen Anne (RSC); Ben Hur (Tricycle); A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes (Tricycle); La Musica (Young Vic); The Mentalists (Wyndham’s);We Want You To Watch (National Theatre Temporary Space); Ah, Wilderness! (Young Vic); Multitudes (Tricycle); The Ruling Class (Trafalgar Transformed); The Walworth Farce (Olympia, Dublin); 2071 (Royal Court); Minetti (EIF); Richard III (Traf Transformed); Adler and Gibb (Royal Court); Dawn French (UK tour); Fiction (UK tour); Blithe Spirit (Gielgud/US tour); Boeing Boeing (Sheffield Crucible); I Can’t Sing (London Palladium) and The Full Monty (Sheffield/Noël Coward). Ben and Max are associate artists with the Shunt collective and two-thirds of the band Superthriller. In 2013 they designed ‘Papa Sangre II’ a sound-based IOS game for digital arts company Somethin’ Else. They are also cocreators of the immersive theatre company Wiretapper. Awards: Off-Westend Awards Best Sound Designer Winner 2014 (Ring, BAC); IMGA Excellence in Sound Design Award Winner 2014 (Papa Sangre II); Best Sound Design Laurence Olivier Award Nomination 2012 (The Ladykillers); Best Sound Design Laurence Olivier Award Nomination 2009 (Piaf); Best Overall Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre Laurence Olivier Award Winner (as part of the creative team) 2009 (The Pride).
Fly Davis‘ previous designs for the Royal Exchange Theatre include: Our Town, How My Light Is Spent (also Sherman Theatre and Theatre by the Lake), A Streetcar Named Desire, Scuttlers, Hunger for Trade and Nothing. Previous designs for the Bush Theatre include: Russell Kane’s The Great British Country Fête Musical (also UK tour). Other design credits include: The Comedy of Errors, I Want My Hat Back, The Beginning (National Theatre; Olivier nominated); A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Caroline, or Change (Chichester Festival Theatre); Othello (Shakespeare’s Globe); A Winter’s Tale (Lyceum); Trade, Barbarians (Olivier nominated); Turning a Little Further, A Streetcar Named Desire (Young Vic); The Remains of Maisie Duggan (Abbey, Dublin); Unreachable (Royal Court, costume designer); Contractions (Sheffield Crucible); The Glass Menagerie (Headlong/West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse/Richmond); Opera for the Unknown Woman (Fuel UK tour); The Crocodile (Manchester International Festival/Invisible Dot); James and the Giant Peach (West Yorkshire Playhouse); I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep Than Some Other Arsehole, Image of an Unknown Young Woman (Gate); Primetime, Pigeons, Collaboration (Royal Court); Eye of a Needle, Superior Donuts (Southwark Playhouse); The Dissidents (Tricycle); Nick Mohammed’s Dracula Mr Swallow The Musical! (Soho Invisible Dot); Woyzeck (Omnibus); What the Animals Say (Greyscale UK tour); The Invisible Dot’s Big Birthday Bash (Hammersmith Apollo); Love Is Easy (McFly music video). Awards: Off West End Award Best Set Design, Best Production for Image of an Unknown Young Woman (Gate).
James’s first full-length play, Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, was runner-up of the Soho Theatre’s 2013 Verity Bargate Award. It premiered at Hampstead Theatre downstairs in 2014 and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre before transferring to Trafalgar Studios in 2015. It then won him the “Most Promising Playwright” prize at the Critics Circle Theatre Awards 2015. His other plays include Ross & Rachel (“a virtuosic peice of writing” Time Out) which opened to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2015, Parliament Square, which won a Bruntwood Prize in 2015 and The Fall which he wrote for the National Youth Theatre’s 60th anniversary season in 2016. In 2017 his radio play Comment Is Free won both the Imison and the Tinniswood Awards at the BBC Audio Drama Awards, which is the first time that a single writer has won both awards the same year.
Jennifer trained at East 15 and is a movement director and actor.
Movement direction includes: Amsterdam (ATC/Orange Tree/ Theatre Royal Plymouth), Pops (Jake Orr Productions), I Wanna Be Yours (Paines Plough/The Bush), Death of a Salesman, Queens of the Coal Age, Our Town (Royal Exchange Theatre), Parliament Square (Bush Theatre/Royal Exchange Theatre),The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (New Vic Theatre), Be My Baby, Around The World in 80 Days (Leeds Playhouse), The Trick (Loose Tongue/Bush Theatre/High Tide), Philoxenia (Bush Theatre), Mountaintop UK Tour (Desara Productions Ltd), Mayfly, Out of Water (Orange Tree), Brighton Rock (Pilot Theatre /The Lowry), I Want To Be Yours, Island Town, Sticks and Stones, How to Spot an Alien (Paines Plough Roundabout), The Mountaintop (Young Vic), Black Mountain, How to be a Kid, Out of Love (Paines Plough & Orange Tree), Death of a Salesman (Royal & Derngate), The Ugly One (The Park), Why The Whales Came (Southbank Centre), Stone Face (Finborough Theatre), Debris (Southwark Playhouse/Openworks Theatre), Macbeth (Passion in Practice/Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), Silent Planet (Finborough), Pericles (Berwaldhallen), The Future (The Yard/Company Three), Other-Please Specify, Atoms (Company Three), Takeover 2017 (Kiln Theatre).
Assistant movement director: Lungs, The Initiate, My Teacher’s a Troll (Paines Plough Roundabout 2014).
Jude Christian’s credits as director, for theatre include: Bodies, Lela & Co. (Royal Court) The Darkest Corners (Transform); The Path (Hightide); Blue (RWCMD); Split/Mixed (Summerhall); How Do You Eat An Elephant/Bwyta Eliffant, Sut Mae Gwneud Hynny Dwedwch? (National Youth Theatre of Wales); Happy, The Mushroom (Pentabus Young Writers’ Festival); Punk Rock, Last Easter (RADA); I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep than Some Other Arsehole (Gate, Boom Arts); Balansera (Poole Lighthouse); Sonata Movements (Blue Elephant)
As writer/performer, theatre includes: Nanjing (The Yard). Opera includes: ©alculated to Death (Tête-à-Tête Festival), Hidden in Plain Sight (Académie du Festival d’Aix-en-Provence). As Associate Director, theatre includes: Shopping and Fucking, Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith); Carmen Disruption (Almeida)
Jude is a Creative Associate at the Gate Theatre and an Associate Artist at The Yard Theatre and the Lyric Hammersmith.
