Angry Brigade Rehearsal Room Photo by Helen Murray
A Paines Plough and Theatre Royal Plymouth production
A bold new play by James Graham, writer of sell-out smash hits This House (Royal National Theatre) and Privacy (Donmar Warehouse).
“Its government has declared a vicious class war.
A one-sided war…
We have started to fight back…
…with bombs.”
Against a backdrop of Tory cuts, high unemployment and the deregulated economy of 1970s Britain, a young urban guerrilla group mobilises: The Angry Brigade.
Their targets: MPs. Embassies. Police. Pageant Queens.
A world of order shattered by anarchy; the rules have changed. An uprising has begun. No one is exempt.
Charles’ recent credits include The River (Broadway); The Christmas Truce (RSC); Richard III, Mojo (West End); The Events (Young Vic/New York Theater Workshop/ATC); Minetti (Edinburgh International Festival; The Angry Brigade (Paines Plough); Dirty Butterfly (Young Vic); Body of an American (Gate); Phaedra (Barbican/Richard Alston Dance).
Other theatre include Posh, Through the Leaves (West End); The River, Choir Boy, Chicken Soup with Barley, Now or Later, The Ugly One, Country Music (Royal Court); I’ll Be the Devil (RSC); The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Girlfriend Experience (Young Vic); Jumpers for Goalposts (Paines Plough); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Sheffield Crucible); Orlando, The Accrington Pals, To Kill a Mockingbird (Manchester Royal Exchange); Oh, What a Lovely War, Look Back in Anger, The Borrowers, Catch-22 (Northern Stage); Crave/Illusions (ATC); A Kind of Alaska/Krapp’s Last Tape (Bristol Old Vic); Flint Street Nativity, The Tempest (Liverpool Playhouse); Duchess of Malfi, Hedda Gabler (W Yorkshire Playhouse); Guid Sisters (Edinburgh Royal Lyceum).
Dance and Music includes 35 works for Richard Alston Dance Company (Sadler’s Wells & worldwide); Red Balloon, Magical Night (Aletta Collins/ROH2); Bloom, Labyrinth of Love (Rambert); Eden/Eden (Wayne McGregor/Stuttgart & San Francisco Ballets), Run for It (Scottish Ballet/Cultural Olympiad); Women in Memory (Rosemary Butcher/Tate Modern); Turning World (Beijing Dance Academy); Four Seasons (Oliver Hindle/Birmingham Royal Ballet); OperaShots 2010 & 2011, La Voix Humaine (Royal Opera House), Carmen, Werther, Saul (Opera North); Zbigniew Preisner’s Silence, Night and Dreams (Athens Acropolis).
Charles won the 2013 Knight of Illumination Award (Drama) for The River, the 2013 TMA UK Theatre Best Design Award for The Accrington Pals and the 2014 BroadwayWorld.com West End best lighting award for Richard III.
James Graham is a playwright and film and television writer who won the Pearson Playwriting Bursary in 2006 and went on to win the Catherine Johnson Award for the Best Play in 2007 for his play Eden‘s Empire.
James’ play This House premièred at the Cottesloe Theatre in September 2012, directed by Jeremy Herrin, and transferred to the Olivier in 2013 where it enjoyed a sell out run and garnered critical acclaim and a huge amount of interest and admiration from current and former MP’s for his rendition of life in the House of Commons.
James’s play Tory Boyz for the National Youth Theatre caused a storm during its run at the Soho Theatre and received excellent reviews for its portrayal of young, gay men in the modern Conservative Party. His play The Whisky Taster premiered at the Bush Theatre in early 2010 to uniformly excellent reviews.
James has written the book for Finding Neverland the musical with music by Gary Barlow. It opened in Boston in Summer 2014 and transfers to New York in Spring 2015. His new play The Vote will air on real time on TV in the final 90 minutes of the 2015 polling day.
His first film for television, Caught in a Trap, was broadcast on ITV1 on Boxing Day 2008. James was picked as one of BroadcastMagazine’s Hotshots in the same year. He is developing original series and adaptations with Tiger Aspect, Leftbank, Kudos and the BBC.
His film X and Y is being produced by Origin Pictures and BBC Films and was on the prestigious ‘Brit List’, the list of the best unproduced screenplays in the UK. He is currently adapting the bestselling book Gypsy Boy as a feature film also for BBC Film and working with the Weinstein Co. on an adaptation of Mrs Queen Takes the Train.
James is the co-Artistic Director of Paines Plough. He was formerly co-founder and Artistic Director of nabokov for 10 years and Associate Director of the Bush Theatre.
James previously collaborated with The Angry Brigade playwright James Graham at the Bush on The Whisky Taster. Other credits for the Bush Theatre include Jumpers for Goalposts by Tom Wells, Psychogeography by Lucy Kirkwood, Artefacts by Mike Bartlett
For Paines Plough James has also directed An Intervention and Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett , Hopelessly Devoted and Wasted by Kate Tempest, The Sound of Heavy Rain by Penelope Skinner, You Cannot Go Forward From Where You Are Right Now by David Watson, Tiny Volcanoes by Laurence Wilson and Fly Me to the Moon by Marie Jones.
Further directing credits include Translations (Sheffield Theatres / ETT / The Rose, Kingston) A Nobody (66 Books) by Laura Dockrill, St Petersburg by Declan Feenan, Kitchen, Bedtime for Bastards and Nikolina by Van Badham, Old Street by Patrick Marber and When Cheryl was Brassic by Leo Richardson (nabokov), The List by David Eldridge (Arcola).
James has also directed comedians and poets including Isy Suttie, Simon Brodkin (Lee Nelson), Luke Wright, Martin Figura and Aisle16.
He trained as assistant and associate director to Josie Rourke, as staff director to Howard Davies at The National Theatre, and on the National Theatre Studio Director’s Course.
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.
Polly Bennett is a Movement Director and Choreographer working across the UK and internationally. She holds an MA in Movement from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and was Resident Company Movement Practitioner at the Royal Shakespeare Company 2013.
Polly was Assistant Movement Director on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony, Mass Cast Choreographer on the London 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony and Mass Cast Choreographer on Sochi Winter Olympics Opening and Paralympic Ceremonies.
Polly’s theatre credits include A Mad World My Masters (RSC/ETT), Dunsinane (National Theatre Scotland, UK, Asian and US Tour), Yen (Manchester Royal Exchange), The King’s Speech (Chichester Festival Theatre/Birmingham Rep), Pomona (Orange Tree Theatre), Hopelessly Devoted (Paines Plough, UK Tour), Helver’s Night (York Theatre Royal), To Kill a Mockingbird (Regents Park Open Air Theatre, UK Tour), The Angry Brigade (Paines Plough, UK Tour), Ragnarok (Eastern Angles), Mock Tudor (Pleasance, Theatre 503), Anna (Aix-en-Provence International Festival), Nut (National Theatre), Hysteria (Hampstead Theatre), Acis and Galatea (Iford Opera), Mudlarks (Bush Theatre), The Lights (The Spring) and Celebrity Night at Café Red (Trafalgar Studios.)
Other: Fazer’s Urban Symphony (Royal Albert Hall/BBC), The Queen’s Coronation Concerts (Buckingham Palace/BBC) and The Festival of Neighbourhood Finale (Royal Festival Hall)
Tom’s recent design credits for Parrot{in the}Tank include Excursions (Arts Depot and Roundhouse) Just Above The Below (Arts Theatre, Paradise Gardens Festival, Tour of Slovakia) and Freeman Gallop (ICA London, Prague Scenofest, Budva Montenegro), Storm out of a Teacup (Arts Depot).
Other recent design credits include Mr Burns (Almeida), An Intervention (Watford Palace), Happy Days, A View From The Bridge (Young Vic), Translations (Sheffield Crucible), 1984 (Almeida, Headlong), Lion Boy (Complicite), White Devil, As You Like It (RSC), Julius Caesar (Donmar), The Spire (Salisbury Playhouse), London (Paines Plough), Roundabout Season (Shoreditch Town Hall, Paines Plough), The Rover (Hampton Court Palace), Love Love Love, (Royal Court), Island (National Theatre, Tour), Romeo & Juliet (Headlong), Disco Pigs (Young Vic), Dead Heavy Fantastic (Liverpool Everyman), Plenty (Crucible Studio, Sheffield), Encourage The Others (Almeida), Wasted (Paines Plough, Tour), Chalet Lines, The Knowledge, Little Platoons, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, (Bush Theatre) Hairy Ape, Shivered, Faith, Hope and Charity, The Hostage, Toad (Southwark Playhouse), Sold (503), The Chairs (Ustinov Bath), The Country, The Road To Mecca, The Roman Bath, 1936, The Shawl (Arcola), Utopia, Bagpuss, Everything Must Go, Soho Streets (Soho Theatre), Hitchcock Blonde (Hull Truck)
