Fourteen actors will be directed by four directors in plays by playwrights from Britain, New York and Georgia. The plays are Lasha Bughadze's The President Has Come to See You (running June 11-15), New York-based writer Lucas Hnatch's Death Tax (running June 18-22), Suhayla El-Bushra's Pigeons (running June 25-29), Clare Lizzimore's Mint (running July 2-6), New York-based writer Nikole Beckwith's Untitled Matriarch Play (or Seven Sisters) (running July 9-13) and Alistair McDowall's Talk Show (running July 16-20). The acting ensemble will be Paul Bhattacharjee, Anna Calder-Marshall, Debbie Chazen, Farzana Dua Elahe, Laura Elphinstone, Natasha Gordon, Jonjo O'Neill, Siobhan Redmond, Ferdy Roberts, Ryan Sampson, Nav Sidhu, Angela Terence, Sam Troughton, Alan Williams. They will be directed by Carrie Cracknell, Vicky Featherstone, John Tiffany and Caroline Steinbeis.
The Weekly Rep was suggested by playwright Caryl Churchill and echoes the famed summer seasons in repertory theatres around Britain. In a press statement, Churchill commented, "Theatres have more plays than they have time or money for, so writers these days often get encouragement, workshops or readings rather than productions. Writers live in hope, or despair, and do a lot of rewrites. But a play doesn’t really exist till it's happened on a stage, and a writer learns more from that than from anything, and can move on and write another one. So even a short rehearsal and short run is worth having. And if a play is done more or less at once, as it was written, though it may be rougher there is less danger of innovation being blunted by too much advice. Of course we often envy European theatres which have the money for rehearsals twice as long as ours. But there is a different and exhilarating skill to enjoy in getting a play on in a week – it's how actors used to develop their craft in theatres all over the country and the audience can get to know a company of actors and see them doing something different very week."
To book tickets, contact the box office on 0207 565 5000 or visit www.royalcourttheatre.com for more details.
