In the late 21st Century, one man still clings to Traditional British Values, managing his wayward wife and running a butchers shop: his Empire. When Perchik, committed vegetarian and outlaw artist, swims across Hadrian's Channel to England and stows away in a container full of meat, he lands up in Saul's shop. Since Saul's last boy went missing, Perchik gets an instant job offer. With riots raging in the streets outside, it may be safest to accept. Or maybe not.
TINDERBOX comes after Lucy Kirkwood's first play, GRADY HOT POTATO, presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, for which she won the PMA Award. She also writes for SKINS (Channel 4) and is the resident writer with Clean Break Theatre Company.
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.
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