KJ and Jasper are professional slackers and best friends. They spend their days outside the back of a small coffee shop in Vermont, talking music and Bukowski. 17 year old Evan is just getting ready for life, eking out his Summer working at the café. KJ and Jasper draw him into their world of magic mushrooms, philosophical musings and great-bands-that never-were.
One of the freshest voices to come out of America in recent years, Annie Baker’s gentle, engaging and deeply funny play introduces two new cult heroes in the shape of KJ and Jasper, and puts modern day America under the microscope to ask what happened to the generation who never grew up.
The Aliens opened in New York at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in April 2010. It won the 2010 Obie Award for Best Play, joint with Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. Both plays were also given a Special Citation by the New York Drama Critics Circle
Peter Gill is considered to be one of the most influential directors of the last 40 years. He directed groundbreaking productions by D.H. Lawrence and Joe Orton at the Royal Court during the 60’s and founded the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith and the National Theatre Studio in the 70’s and 80’s
Complete your evening with a great meal at Jamie’s Italian
The Bush has teamed up with Jamie’s Italian in the Westfield Centre to offer audiences of The Aliens an exclusive booking service so you can enjoy a pre or post show Italian meal without waiting in line for a table!
To book, just call 020 80909070, Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm and quote “Aliens”. You will need to present your theatre ticket on the night. Valid from 15 Sep – 16 Oct
Annie Baker (Writer)
Annie Baker grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her full-length plays include Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Playwright), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, OBIE Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, OBIE Award for Best New American Play), The End of the Middle Ages (commission for Soho Rep) and Nocturama. Her work has also been developed and produced at New York Theatre Workshop, MCC, Soho Rep, the Orchard Project, the Ontological-Hysteric, Ars Nova, the Huntington, South Coast Rep, the Magic Theater, the Cape Cod Theatre Project, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Utah and Ucross, Wyoming. Recent honors include a New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation, a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nomination, a Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship and commissions from Center Theatre Group and Playwrights Horizons.
Theatre for the Bush includes: Cruising.
Other theatre includes: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Novello Theatre); The Gods Weep and Days of Significance (RSC); Gurrelieder for the London Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Royal Festival Hall; La Serva Padrona and ToHell and Back (for Opera Faber at the Viana do Castelo festival, Portugal); Victory: Choices in Reaction and The Road to Mecca (Arcola); The Chairs and Gagarin Way (Bath); How to be an Other Woman and Things of Dry Hours (The Gate); Rusalka (ETO); Goalmouth (The Sage, Gateshead); Ma Vie En Rose (Young Vic); Alaska (Royal Court); Widowers’ Houses, A Taste of Honey, See How They Run, Pretend You Have Big Buildings, Cyrano de Bergerac, Harvey and Roots (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Rope (Watermill Theatre, Newbury);Blood Wedding (South Bank); Sweetness and Badness (WNO); After Miss Julie, Othello, Woman In Mind and Be My Baby (Salisbury); TILT (Traverse, Edinburgh); Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams (RADA); Humble Boy and The 101 Dalmatians (Northampton); Stallerhof (Southwark Playhouse); Fijis (for Jean Abreu Dance at the South Bank Centre and The Place); Inside (Jean Abreu Dance); The Leningrad Siege (Wilton’s Music Hall); The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek (Manchester Royal Exchange and Southwark Playhouse); The Fantasticks, Ain’t Misbehavin’; House and Garden, and Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick (Harrogate), The Secret Rapture (Chichester); Twelfth Night (Cambridge); Look Back In Anger (Exeter); Dov and Ali, The Water Engine, The Water Harvest, Photos of Religion and A State of Innocence (Theatre 503).
David trained at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Francesca Annis makes her Bush Theatre debut. Her theatre credits includes Time and Conways (National Theatre), Afterplay (Sydney Festival), Under the Blue Sky (Duke of York’s), The Glass Menagerie (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Epitaph for George Dillon (Comedy Theatre), Henry IV and The Vortex (Donmar Warehouse), Blood (Royal Court), Hedda Gabler (Chichester Festival Theatre and West End) and Hamlet (Almeida and New York). Her television work includes Little House, Cranford, Jane Eyre, Jericho, Copenhagen, Deceit, Wives and Daughters and Reckless; and for film, Shifty, Revolver, The Libertine, Milk, The Debt Collector, Dune, Krull, Macbeth, The Eyes of Annie Jones, Saturday Night Out and Cleopatra.
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.
Peter Gill is considered to be one of the most influential directors of the last 40 years. He directed groundbreaking productions by D.H. Lawrence and Joe Orton at the Royal Court during the 60’s and founded the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith and the National Theatre Studio in the 70’s and 80’s. He is an acclaimed playwright whose work includes The Sleepers Den (Royal Court), Over Gardens Out (Royal Court), Small Change (Royal Court), Kick for Touch (National Theatre), Cardiff East (National Theatre), Certain Young Men (Almeida), The York Realist (English Touring Theatre at the Royal Court) and Original Sin (Sheffield Theatres).
Terry started his professional composing at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank where he had been a music director and orchestrator. He first worked there as co-orchestrator of the multi-award winning Guys and Dolls and has gone on to work on some 32 productions. Alongside these have been scores for the RoyalShakespeare Company, Donmar Warehouse, Almeida, Royal Court and many other theatres.
In the recording studio Terry has conducted or orchestrated the music for many TV dramas and documentaries as well as 47 feature films. Current among these are The Illusionist and Mike Leigh’s Another Year. Original music for TV includes his score for The Car Man and the songs for Tipping the Velvet which gained him a BAFTA nomination. He is an associate artist of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures company and he won an Olivier Award for his music for Matthew’s Play Without Words.
Tom trained at Central School of Speech and Drama in Theatre Sound and is resident sound designer for international physical theatre company Parrot{in the}Tank.
Designs for the Bush: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover at Christmas, The Broken Space Season (as Associate), The Aliens (as Associate), The Schools Season.
Other recent design credits include: Love Love Love (Paines Plough, Tour), The Chairs (Theatre Royal Bath), The Road To Mecca, The Roman Bath, 1936, The Shawl (Arcola),Everything Must Go, Soho Streets (Soho Theatre), Holes (New Wimbledon Studio), Terror Tales (Hampstead Studio), The Hostage, Present Tense (Southwark Playhouse), Faustus (Watford Palace, Tour), Faithless Bitches(Courtyard), FAT (The Oval House), Just Me Bell (Graeae, Tour), Blue Heaven (Finborough), Pitching In (Latitude Festival, Tour), I Can Sing A Rainbow with Nabokov and Sheffield Theatres (Lyceum Sheffield), Pendulum (Jermyn Street), Journalist and Hope (ICA London), Machinal (Central), Bar Of Ideas (Paradise Gardens Festival and Glastonbury/Shangri-La).
TV includes: The Fades, Lewis: Allegory of Love, Summerhill.
Film includes: The Dish and the Spoon, Gulliver’s Travels, Dust, Tormented, Bright Star, Enter The Void.
Theatre includes: Jerusalem (Royal Court); The Seagull (Royal Court and Broadway); Exonerated (Riverside Studios); One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Gielgud Theatre).
TV includes: The Accused, Merlin, Skins, Demons, Little Dorritt, The Office, The 11 o’Clock Show.
Film includes: Ironclad, The Adventures of TinTin, Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘r’ Roll, Solomane Kane, 3 and Out, City of Ember, Pirates of the Carribbean 1, 2 and 3, Land of the Blind, The Merchant of Venice, Brothers Grimm, Churchill: The Hollywood Years, Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Finding Neverland, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Still Crazy, Ant Muzak.
Theatre for the Bush includes: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.
Other theatre includes: Stacy (Trafalgar Studios); On The Ceiling (Garrick); Billy Liar (ATG); Notes on Falling Leaves, Presence (Royal Court).
TV includes: Married Single Other, Massive, Miss Marple, Robin Hood, Heartbeat, The Royle Family, Brief Encounters, Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps, The Eustace Bros, Pear Shaped North Face of the Eiger, Paradise Heights, The Bill, Always & Everyone, Flint Street Nativity, Bostockis Cup.
Film includes: Powder, Telstar, The Waiting Room, Frozen, 24 Hour Party People, Al’s Lads.
