Artistic Director Anda Winters today announces Print Room at the Coronet’s Autumn / Winter 2015 season at its new, permanent home at the Coronet in London’s Notting Hill, with two productions presented in the main auditorium at the iconic listed building and former Victorian playhouse, alongside further programming in the smaller studio space.
Commenting on Print Room at the Coronet’s fourth season, Anda Winters said: “We are thrilled to offer this new season of fascinating and diverse work, including the first piece of dramatic theatre to happen in the beautiful main auditorium for almost one hundred years. We look forward to inviting our growing audiences to see more of the very best of today’s live performance as we continue to breathe new life into this wonderful, historic building."
Print Room at the Coronet is widely recognised for its bold and imaginative plans, and continues to produce acclaimed and eclectic seasons of theatre including world premieres from major playwrights, dance, poetry and other performing arts. The Print Room at the Coronet champions creative artists from around the world, providing them with the opportunity to create innovative work across a range of disciplines. Resident at the Coronet since October 2014, the Print Room is continuing to expand its breadth of work alongside the building’s renovation.
Opening the third season from 14 September – 10 October 2015, the Print Room presents TS Eliot’s rarely performed masterpiece The Cocktail Party, which will be directed by rising star Abbey Wright in the main auditorium. Casting is to be announced.
Next in the main auditorium from 15 October – 7 November 2015, the internationally-renowned Handspring Puppet Company (of War Horse renown) presents their highly acclaimed production of Ubu and the Truth Commission, written by Jane Taylor and directed by artist and film-maker William Kentridge.
Ubu and the Truth Commission brought together South African artist William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company. Premiered in South Africa in 1997, and subsequently performed internationally, Ubu and the Truth Commission was revived last year to mark the 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa. Poignant testimonies that once formed part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings are given by characters played by Handspring’s puppets, and this metaphorical tale of marital betrayal affords glimpses into the devastating complexities of apartheid.
With its dark and sardonic wit, Ubu and the Truth Commission combines puppetry, live performance, music, animation and documentary footage. The play draws on both the historical archive of the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on Ubu Roi, the licentious buffoon created in 1888 by the youthful French playwright, Alfred Jarry. Pa Ubu represents instruments of Apartheid violence as policemen, assassins, spies and politicians for whom torture, murder, sex and food are all variations of a single gross appetite.
The cast includes original actors Busi Zokufa and Dawid Minnaar as Ma and Pa Ubu. Puppeteers are Gabriel Marchand, Mandiseli Maseti and Mongi Mthombeni.
Continuing the popular Poetry @ the Print Room series, there will be three poetry evenings in the studio space on Tuesday 13 October, Thursday 19 November and Tuesday 15 December 2015, with contemporary poets reading and sharing their poetic work. Don Paterson will read on 15 December with other poets to be announced.
From 11-18 November 2015, in a co-production with the Institut Français, there will be a week-long presentation in the studio of Trois Ruptures / Three Splits, which premiered earlier this year at Chelsea Theatre.
The final production in the autumn season, in the run-up to Christmas, from 23 November – 12 December 2015, will be the acclaimed and enchanting Table of Delights, presented as a co-production with Bristol’s Theatre Damfino featuring recipes from Guardian food writer and chef Claire Thomson (author of 5 O’Clock Apron).
Website: www.the-print-room.org
Twitter: @the_printroom
THE COCKTAIL PARTY
14 September- 10 October 2015
Press Night at Print Room at the Coronet: Friday 18 September 2015
A Print Room production in the main auditorium
Written by TS Eliot
Directed by Abbey Wright
Designed by Richard Kent
Lighting designed by David Plater
Composer / Sound Design by Gary Yershon
The Print Room is delighted to be working for the first time with emerging director Abbey Wright to bring to the stage TS Eliot’s modern masterpiece – the verse play The Cocktail Party. Described by Eliot himself as a comedy, The Cocktail Party is a complex drama about the human mind, love and deceit. Piercing and perceptive, it is a radical play, moving from astute social comedy to devastating existential ghost story. Casting is to be announced.
Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne are throwing a cocktail party. The only problem is, four days before the party, Lavinia leaves Edward. Instead of cancelling, Edward plans to avert his guests’ prying enquiries after his missing wife. That is, until an ‘Unidentified Guest’ shows up at the party, with Lavinia in tow. What ensues is an examination of Lavinia’s and Edward’s relationship, through the lens of mysticism, psychoanalysis, and emotional deconstruction.
The Cocktail Party is often considered one of Eliot’s best works, and was his most popular play during his lifetime. Eliot’s preoccupation with time, the human condition, and existential meaning can be traced through his best known poems The Waste Land, Four Quartets and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock right through to his verse dramas Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party. For many, this will be the first production of The Cocktail Party in a lifetime. After its debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949 with Alec Guinness in the role of the Unidentified Guest, The Cocktail Party premiered on Broadway in 1950, where it received the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play.
Abbey Wright is currently rehearsing The Mentalists with Stephen Merchant and Steffan Rhodri which opens in the West End in July. Her most recent production of The Father at Trafalgar Studios was widely acclaimed. She is the Artistic Director of tackroom theatre which she founded in 2013 to create new work, which is regularly selected for Critics’ Choice. Her most recent work includes: Ghosts (New Vic Theatre), Mrs Lowry and Son (Trafalgar Studio 2), Holiday and The Eisteddfod (The Bussey Building), The Glass Supper (Hampstead Downstairs), Dublin Carol (Donmar@Trafalgar), Bitch Boxer (Soho – Young People’s Writer’s Award), Foxfinder (GEST), Rose (Pleasance Forth), Lakeboat and Prairie du Chien (Arcola), and The Ones That Flutter (Theatre 503). Abbey was Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse under Michael Grandage and worked on The Family Reunion, Creditors, Piaf, The Man Who Had All the Luck, Be Near Me, Small Change and The Chalk Garden. She was Staff Director to Danny Boyle on Frankenstein at The National Theatre.
Richard Kent is currently designingThe Mentalists (Wyndhams). His theatre design credits include Communicating Doors (Menier Chocolate Factory), Outside Mullingar (Theatre Royal Bath), Man to Man (Wales Millenium Centre), Bad Jews (Ustinov Bath, St James & Arts) Anything Goes, (Sheffield Crucible & UK tour) The Sheffield mysteries, Macbeth (Sheffield Crucible), This Is My Family (Sheffield Crucible studio & UK Tour) Handbagged (Tricycle & Vauderville) Multitudes, The Colby Sisters Of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, A Boy and His Soul, Paper Dolls (Tricycle),The Merchant of Venice (Singapore Repertory Theatre), The El. Train (Hoxton Hall) , Mrs Lowry and Son (Trafalgar Studios 2), Neighbors (Hightide Festival and Nuffield Southampton), The Dance of Death(Donmar Warehouse at Trafalgar Studios), Josephine Hart Poetry Week (ARTS), 13(NYMT, Apollo), Clockwork (Hightide Festival), Titanic – Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioners Inquiry: 1912 (MAC Theatre, Belfast), Richard II (Donmar Warehouse), Mixed Marriage (Finborough Theatre), Decline and Fall (Old Red Lion), The Stronger, Pariah (Arcola) and Gin & Tonic and Passing Trains (Tramway, Glasgow). Richard worked as Associate to Christopher Oram from 2008 – 2012 working in the West End, on Broadway and at various International Opera Houses.
UBU AND THE TRUTH COMMISSION
15 October – 7 November 2015
Main auditorium
Press Night at the Print Room: Monday 19 October
Directed by William Kentridge
Written by Jane Taylor
Puppets, set and costumes designed by Adrian Kohler
Animation and set designed by William Kentridge
Choreographed by Robyn Orlin
Ubu and the Truth Commission brought together South African artist William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company. Premiered in South Africa in 1997, and subsequently performed internationally, Ubu and the Truth Commission was revived last year to mark the 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa. Poignant testimonies that once formed part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings are given by characters played by Handspring’s puppets, and this metaphorical tale of marital betrayal affords glimpses into the devastating complexities of apartheid.
With its dark and sardonic wit, Ubu and the Truth Commission combines puppetry, live performance, music, animation and documentary footage. The play draws on both the historical archive of the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and on Ubu Roi, the licentious buffoon created in 1888 by the youthful French playwright, Alfred Jarry. Pa Ubu represents instruments of Apartheid violence as policemen, assassins, spies and politicians for whom torture, murder, sex and food are all variations of a single gross appetite.
The cast includes original actors Busi Zokufa and Dawid Minnaar as Ma and Pa Ubu. Puppeteers are Gabriel Marchand, Mandiseli Maseti and Mongi Mthombeni.
Based in Cape Town under Artistic Director Adrian Kohler and executive producer Basil Jones, Handspring Puppet Company has explored the boundaries of puppet theatre for three decades, and their work has been presented in more than 30 countries. The company has created puppets for 18 theatrical productions, and their creations have been seen in 55 cities around the world. The phenomenal success of the National Theatre’s production of War Horse firmly established Handspring as one of the most important theatre companies in the world through its use of finely crafted puppets within a live theatrical context. Most recent productions include War Horse (West End, Broadway, Toronto, US and UK national tours, Australia and Berlin), Tom Morris’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bristol Old Vic and Spoleto Festival), Woyzeck on the Highveld (Czech Republic and Germany), Stiller (Germany), I Love You When You’re Breathing (France) and Ouroboros (World Puppet Festival in France, Belgium and India).
William Kentridge is one of South Africa’s greatest artists and film-makers, internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions, and has collaborated on several projects with the Handspring Puppet Company. Although Kentridge moves back and forth between media and art form, his primary activity remains drawing. Kentridge describes his work as ‘political art’ – political events are transformed into powerful poetic allegories, and his subject matter has gradually departed from a specifically South African context, to confront more general concerns of social injustice, revolutionary politics and the power of creative expression. His work is inspired by artistic satirists such as Honoré Daumier, Francisco de Goya and William Hogarth. Between 1989 and 2003 Kentridge made a series of nine short films that he eventually gathered under the title 9 Drawings for Projection, which began with the animated film, Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris and included Felix in Exile. In 2010 Kentridge received the Kyoto Prize in recognition of his contributions in the field of arts and philosophy. In 2011 he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London. Recently his work has been exhibited widely around the world at Tate Modern, Jeu de Paume and Louvre, La Scala in Milan, the Pinacoteca do Estadode São Paulo, and at the Metropolitan Opera and Museum of Modern Art in New York. His opera production of Berg’s Lulu, a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera New York, the English National Opera and the Dutch National Opera, recently opened in Amsterdam and will première in New York in November 2015.
Jane Taylor is a South African who now holds the Wole Soyinka Chair of Theatre at the University of Leeds. She is a creative writer as well as a scholar, curator and theatre director. Her primary areas of scholarship include early modern theatre studies. In particular Taylor has an interest in the Reformation and its impact on modes of staging the Self. For some years she has been engaged in the study of puppetry arts and has written two puppet plays for Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge; and edited the recent study "Handspring Puppet Company". In 1996 she established "FaultLines," a series of arts responses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa; at which time she wrote the play text of Ubu and the Truth Commission. She has lectured frequently on the Art and the Politics of transitional justice. She has published frequently on the work of WIlliam Kentridge and is currently finishing a manuscript for the University of Chicago on Kentridge’s production of The Nose at the New York Metropolitan Opera. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford and at Cambridge, and has been the recipient of Mellon and Rockefeller Fellowships.
Busi Zokufa (Ma Ubu) is a teacher, actress, singer, puppeteer, storyteller and writer. She was trained as a puppeteer by Handspring Puppet Company and has toured internationally in their productions of Starbites, Ubu and the Truth Commission, Faustus in Africa, The Confessions of Zeno and Woyzeck on the Highveld, and appeared in Return of Ulysses directed by William Kentridge. She received Best Actress Nomination for the Vita Awards in 1998. Other theatre credits include Sister Plus, Slings and Arrows and Ma’s Got The Blues; television credits include Khayeluthu, Home Affairs, Isidingo and Generation.
Dawid Minnaar (Pa Ubu) has worked extensively in South Africa on stage, and in television and film. Theatre credits include Purgatorio (Baxter Theatre, Cape Town), and the title role in an Afrikaans translation of Macbeth. Other credits with Handspring include Faustus in Africa and The Confessions of Zeno. He recently played Afrikaans poet and naturalist Eugène Marais in the film Die Wonderwerker (The Miracle Worker).
Ubu and the Truth Commission is produced by Handspring Puppet Company in association with Quaternaire. The show is co-presented by Print Room and Quaternaire. The show is co-produced by Edinburgh International Festival (United Kingdom), The Taipei Arts Festival and Taipei Culture Foundation (Taiwan), Festival de Marseille _ danse et arts multiples (France), Onassis Cultural Centre (Greece), Cal Performances Berkeley (USA), BOZAR Brussels (Belgium) with support by National Arts Festival, South Africa.
Age guidance : 14 years +. Warning : loud sounds.
POETRY @ THE PRINT ROOM
Tuesday 13 October, Thursday 19 November & Tuesday 15 December 2015 – Don Paterson on 15 December, with other poets to be announced.
TROIS RUPTURES (THREE SPLITS)
11-18 November 2015
Studio
A Print Room co-production with the Institut Français
Written byRémi de Vos
Directed by Marianne Badrichani
Performed by Edith Vernes and Chris Campbell
Video and sound design by Pierre-Alain Giraud
English translation by Chris Campbell
In French with English surtitles
Premiered to sell out London audiences in the UK earlier this year by the Institut Français at Chelsea Theatre and performed in Bejing in May, Trois Ruptures (Three Splits), is a dark comedy by award-winning French writer Rémi de Vos. Trois Ruptures (Three Splits) presents relationships fracturing with joyous, willful violence.
Why settle for an amicable break up when revenge, drama and surprise show how very much we care? Three couples, three splits, three stories. Rémi De Vos’s fierce analysis of human condition, through an absurdist prism, reveals our compelling attraction toward disaster.
Edith Vernes is a French actress based in London who made her debut with Patrice Chéreau in Hamlet. She then worked with various other directors playing different leading roles (Andromaque, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Des Yeux de Soie, Salomé, Isadora, Le Bug…) and collaborating with French contemporary playwrights (Les Directeurs by Daniel Besse). Alongside her work as a performer, she has created a training studio in Paris, and is pursuing her career as a drama teacher in London with her company ‘So French Production’. Last year, her play Discours sur le bonheur by Emilie du Châtelet opened the theatre season En Scène! at the French Institute.
As an actor Chris Campbell has worked at theatres including The National, The Royal Court, The Traverse, The West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Birmingham Rep, The Gate and English Touring Theatre. He most recently appeared alongside Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. He has translated plays by Philippe Minyana, David Lescot, Rémi De Vos, Adeline Picault, Magali Mougel, Lancelot Hamelin, Frédéric Blanchette, Catherine-Anne Toupin and Fabrice Roger-Lacan. Chris was Deputy Literary Manager of the National Theatre for six years and is currently Literary Manager of the Royal Court. In 2014 Chris was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Director Marianne Badrichani has produced and directed French plays in new translations in the UK for the last fifteen years. Productions include Members Only (Cravate Club) with Nicholas Tennant and Robert Bathurst (Trafalgar Studios), 3 Women (Trois Femmes)and The Little Black Book (L’Aide-Memoire) with Paul McGann and Susannah Harker,( both Riverside Studios). Since 2013, she has been Artist in Residence at the French Institute. Trained with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre Studio and at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Marianne has developed a new scheme of work with her company, creating site-specific and immersive performances in unusual venues: Caprice, Blue Beard (as part of Paris Calling), and three commissions by In TRANSIT Festival (RBKC): La Peau de Chagrin (Orangery in Holland Park),Juke Box Theatre/A Show in a Shop Windowand Square Bubble (National Theatre ‘Watch This Space’ programme).
Formerly an actor, Rémi De Vos has written over a dozen plays, published at Actes Sud-Papiers, and his work has been performed in more than 30 countries. Credits include Having…or not, Broken, Sextett, The Rapture of Adèle, Stewardship, West, My Little Young Girl, Alpenstock, Intimate Conviction and Clutch. He is Associate Author at the Scènes du Jura and at Théâtre du Nord, and his works are regularly showed at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris.
TABLE OF DELIGHTS
23 November – 12 December 2015
Studio
A Print Room co-production with Theatre Damfino
Directed by Katy Carmichael
Design by Ruth Shepherd
Original music by Benji Bowers
Dramaturgy by Adam Peck
Cast includes Tristan Sturrock, Joe Hall, Robert Luckay, and Les Bubb
Musicians and performers include Brian Hargreaves, Kate Young, Will Bower and John Railton
The final production in the autumn season in the run up to Christmas, from 23 November – 13 December 2015, will be the innovative food and theatre collaboration The Table of Delights presented by Theatre Damfino, with award-winning Bristol chef Matt Williamson and Guardian Food writer and chef Claire Thomson.
Following a critically acclaimed run of Mayday Mayday in New York last year, the highly imaginative Bristol-based Theatre Damfino bring their latest show to London – a participatory picnic created especially for children. The Table of Delights is an interactive theatrical tasting in five acts, a feast for the senses and an enthralling journey of food tales from field to plate with pirouetting beetroots, singing honey bees and a dairy circus. The young audience will sit around a giant ten metre table centre stage while the chefs prepare delicious tasting morsels in the spotlight. The show will be served up with a twist (and a glass of wine) as a supper club version for adventurous and anarchic grown-ups.
Katy Carmichael is co-artistic director of Theatre Damfino. She directed Tristan Sturrock in his award winning show Mayday Mayday (St Ann’s Warehouse New York, Spoleto festival USA, Bristol Old Vic). She conceived and directed The Little Table of Delights and the adult version The Table of Delights with chefs and fellow parents Matt Williamson and Claire Thomson (Bristol Old Vic.) The company’s previous works include Frankenspine – My Big Break (Bristol Old Vic) and the site- specific Orpheus and the Furies (St. Paul’s Church Crypt, Bristol). She is currently developing Graffboy with writer John Hoggarth.
Tristan Sturrock is co-artistic director of Theatre Damfino. His autobiographical solo show Mayday Mayday was recently adapted as an afternoon play for Radio 4. He has performed with Kneehigh for 30 years, including; Rebecca, Brief Encounter (Broadway / West End), Don John , A Matter of Life and Death, The Riot (National Theatre), Tristan and Yseult (National Theatre, Sydney, U.S.A.), The King of Prussia (Donmar), He is an associate artist at Bristol Old Vic, where his work includes Peter Pan, Coram Boy, Treasure Island. TV includes Poldark, Jamaica Inn, The Best of Men, The Borgias, The Queen, Garrow’s Law, Doc Martin, Rescue Me, Menace, Liverpool One, The New Adventures of Robin Hood; and on film Saving Grace and Swallows and Amazons.
Les Bubb is one of the most innovative, accessible physical comics and mime artists working in Europe. He trained at the Desmond Jones school of mime in London, and in Paris with Phillipe Gaulier at Le Coq, and Etienne Decroux and his assistants. He was a regular on alternative comedy circuit and at Jongleurs and quickly became popular with his unique blend of mime and contemporary clowning, joining the new wave of alternative comedy with contemporaries Ben Elton, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry and Harry Enfield, supporting them live in theatres across the UK , and taking the TV shows Max Headroom and Friday Live by storm Since then Les has been travelling the world both with his full length theatre show Make your brains go…..Pop! and his cabaret/variety act : From the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris to The Magic Castle in Hollywood, winning awards at : the World Circus Festival in Verona and the Wuhan Festival of International Acrobatic Art in China amongst others. He also became a popular variety act for television and has made many appearances worldwide. In addition, the renowned director, Werner Herzog, has sought his unique talents several times, in the multimedia show Variete, playing theatres and Opera houses across Europe, re-opening the world’s first electric theatre in Vienna and as Herr Rothschild in his recent arthouse film Invincible starring Tim Roth. From 1997 to 2002 Les starred in and co-wrote the young peoples series HUBUBB for BBC 1, which extended to five series, making his distinctive surreal humour popular to a whole new generation. He is voice artist on the Harry Potter films for real and virtual characters and physical acting coach. He also starred in the animated movie of Tarzan.
Benji Bower is a critically acclaimed theatre composer. Benji’s work includes Jane Eyre (Bristol Old Vic and National Theatre 2015), Romeo and Juliet (The Rose Kingston) Hetty Feather (Duke of York’s and UK tour) Peter Pan Treasure Island, Aesop’s Fables, Boy who cried Wolf (Bristol Old Vic), and 101 Dalmations and Cinderella (Tobacco Factory). He also composes for TV and film.
Claire Thomsonis a food writer, chef and mother. Faced with the daily challenge of what to cook for her three young children, she made it her mission to inspire parents stuck in a teatime rut. Every day she makes a ‘proper’ tea, tweeting it at 5pm – from that her blog ‘5 O’clock Apron’ was born and a popular Guardian column on cooking for children followed. Her book The Five O’clock Apron, Proper food for modern families was released Spring 2015 (Ebury Press). She has also written for The Telegraph. The Observer and numerous food magazines.
Matt Williamson New Zealand born and raised, Matthew Williamson has 20 years experience in the UK in a wide range of independent restaurants; from Michelin Star London fine dining to rustic rural gastro-pub menu. He has a track record of establishing new and redeveloped catering sites as food destinations. He has successfully developed his own restaurant business, Flinty Red which has established itself as one of Bristol’s best restaurants gaining numerous national accolades He has also created and collaborated on a number of successful projects; including food education, restaurant consultancy, recipe writing, food styling product development and The Table Of Delights.
The Table of Delights.com, a food-entertainment-education world for children online, is currently in development and will be launched early 2016.
