This year’s Vibrant – A Festival of Finborough Playwrights concludes in Week Three, featuring three new plays that shine a light on challenges in modern Britain care of ETPEP Award winner Abigail Andjel, Olivier Award nominee Athena Stevens and Hannah Morley. We caught up with each of them in the last of our three-part festival interview series. Time to get booking!
The Finborough Theatre’s annual explosion of new writing, returning for its eleventh consecutive year, runs from 16 June to 4 July 2019, presenting one-off staged readings of nine new plays on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays.
Curated by Finborough artistic director Neil McPherson and produced by Ben Chamberlain, Vibrant 2019 comprises new plays by 2019 ETPEP Award winner Abigail Andjel, Melis Aker, Albert Belz, Sharmila Chauhan, Hannah Morley, Colleen Murphy, Stewart Pringle and Athena Stevens as well as Einat Weizman and Palestinian Political Prisoners. Their work is directed by Liz Carruthers, Melissa Dunne, Claire Evans, Tommo Fowler, Matthew Iliffe, Hannah Jones, Rory McGregor, Fidelis Morgan and Georgie Staight.
Fence
Sunday 30 June 2019 at 7.30pm
Written by Abigail Andjel, Fence is winner of the ETPEP Award 2019, a playwriting prize for new UK playwrights who work in the theatre industry, run by the Finborough in association with the Experienced Theatre Practitioners Early Playwriting Trust (ETPEP). The Award’s purpose is to find and nurture a playwright who has worked in theatre for two years or more (but not in a literary department setting or as a paid script reader), who is looking to further their ambitions and skill in the art and craft of playwriting. The winner receives £8000, one-to-one dramaturgy, rehearsal workshop and inclusion in Vibrant.
Fence centres on 15-year-old Nico, who has autism, and his mother Maria. Following an aggressive incident at school, they find themselves isolated in their one-bed council flat. With no date given for Nico’s return to school and little action from those who are assigned to help them, they are both deteriorating quickly. Inspired by real events, a new play about isolation, abandonment, strength, love and hope.
Fence is staged on 30 June 2019
About Abigail Andjel
Born in Yorkshire, Abigail Andjel trained as an actor at Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre and has worked in theatres including the Old Vic, the Arcola Theatre and the Public Theater, New York City.
What was your inspiration for the play?
Abigail Andjel
Fence is inspired by a mother and son, whose life I became closely involved with. Their story felt necessary to write. To give a voice to two people, who were repeatedly being muted.
What’s your favourite line in the play?
“Apparently it’s ‘grim’ up North. Well, fuck me! What’s the adjective for the South?”
How do you feel being chosen for Vibrant?
I’m simply ‘over the moon’ (that cow has nothing on me) to have won the ETPEP award and be part of the Vibrant Festival. For such talented and experienced people to believe in my writing and this story, has been a real game-changer for me. This award comes with the best support network. It’s allowing me to develop as a playwright and most importantly, to have a voice.
Scrounger
Monday 1 July 2019 at 7.30pm
On the streets of Elephant and Castle, everyone likes to make speculations about Scrounger. She needs help, she must not be aware of the complexities of the world, she is sent from the demons to torture her mum… at least according to her Nigerian Uber driver. Scrounger doesn’t care. She’s educated, she’s ballsy, and with a huge network of online allies, she’s a woman who knows how to make change happen. That is, until an airline destroys her wheelchair.
Inspired by real events, Scrounger – written by Athena Stevens and directed by Georgie Staight – drives towards the realities of how Britain is failing its most vulnerable and the extreme cost paid by those seeking justice.
Scrounger is staged on 1 July 2019
About Athena Stevens
A Playwright on Attachment to the Finborough, Athena Stevens returns to the venue, where she wrote and performed in the world premiere of the Olivier Award-nominated Schism, which also transferred to the Park Theatre. She is an associate artist at Shakespeare’s Globe. She is currently writing the book for a new musical, and is under commission for BBC Radio 3 and National Youth Theatre. She was the first actor in a wheelchair nominated for an OffWestEnd.com Award for her performance in Schism, as well as appearing at the Barbican Theatre as Juliet last year. Stevens is also a spokesperson for the UK’s Women’s Equality Party.
What was your inspiration for the play?
Athena Stevens
It’s two-fold really. Back in 2016, I sued British Airways and London City airport for damage done to my wheelchair the year before. It’s a common known problem that flying with any sort of mobility impairment means you get treated horribly and you run the risk of your wheelchair being smashed up. Frank Gardener of the BBC has been stuck in the same situation, so it’s destroying productivity professionals.
On the other hand, I wanted to write a play about the complicity of well-meaning liberals, virtue-signalling, and how we are loathe to stick our necks out when issues of injustice are right in front of us. We all want to be seen as “the good guy”, but when you’re on the forefront of human rights battles, very often those who are fighting for what’s right are seen as demanding and aggressive.
We would all rather run marathons for charity as examples of how “caring” we are than risk going out of our comfort zone and engage with difficult questions in front of us. It was a real moment when I realised that, despite having an online petition of over 50,000 signatures trying to get BA to take action, only one person had offered to drive me if I needed to get anywhere.
What’s your favourite line in the play?
“There is no level of hell which cannot be made more miserable with the addition of an LBC broadcast.”
How do you feel being chosen for Vibrant?
The Finborough is like coming home to me. Every time I drive by it, I want to stop the car and smile. As a playwright on attachment, it was the first institution that embraced me. After knocking on doors for over ten years in London, Neil McPherson was the first person to say: “Come on in. No, our building is not ready at all, but come in anyway. Let’s change the industry together.” The risk, combined with a clarity of communication here, is exactly what the theatre industry needs to foster the next generation of theatre-makers.
Rough Music
Thursday 4 July 2019 at 3pm
In Rough Music – written by Hannah Morley and directed by Melissa Dunne – Vi lives in a mobile library parked on the hill beyond the ring-road of a northern market town. Apart from her young employee Isaac, the only person who visits is an eleven-year-old girl, come to hear Vi’s extraordinary tales. Just the three of them is how Vi likes it.
But when she wakes up to see a man hanging from the hornbeam tree outside, Vi struggles to keep her past hidden between the books. In a town where public shaming has become the norm, the library becomes a refuge. But as the water levels rise and the town descends, it’s harder to see who’s worthy of saving. Rough Music explores the power of shame and the stories that we tell about each other.
Rough Music is staged on 4 July 2019
About Hannah Morley
Hannah Morley is currently Channel 4 Playwright in Residence at the Finborough Theatre where her first play Petrichor, written as part of the Writer’s Lab course at Soho Theatre, won the Radius Playwriting Award and was performed as part of Vibrant 2018. Born in Doncaster, Hannah trained as an actor at Guildford School of Acting.
What was your inspiration for the play?
Hannah Morley
It was a collision of a couple of things. Firstly, a news story about a man who died by suicide after being accused of sexual misconduct. This struck me as a horrible and impossible situation for everyone involved – the man, the victims and the man’s loved ones.
I was also becoming aware of my impulses on social media and the temptation to join the mob in condemning people who had behaved reprehensibly. I wanted to work out where that mob impulse comes from but didn’t want to write a play set online.
Around the same time, I stumbled across the story of a judge in Texas who gives out unconventional punishments. One example was a man who he charged to stand outside schools and bars wearing a sandwich board stating his crime – “I KILLED TWO PEOPLE WHILE DRIVING DRUNK”.
Unbelievably, the punishments were ‘successful’ as the level of crime and reoffending went down. I became preoccupied with the question of how we work to build a better world, and condemn the things that need to be condemned, whilst still continuing to imagine each other as complex and flawed human beings. Rough Music is an attempt to puzzle through that question.
What’s your favourite line in the play?
“There are baddies on the road.”
How do you feel being chosen for Vibrant?
I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of the Festival. The Finborough has an unprecedented track record with new writing, so it’s a joy to work there alongside a brilliant director and cracking actors in bringing the play to life. I’m in great company with the other writers who are part of Vibrant.
