INTELLIGENCE Comes to Edinburgh Fringe Next Month

In a taut political play, New York Theatre Company Dutch Kills pick apart how women are perceived in the higher echelons of American diplomacy. Two young Foreign Officers are forced to rethink their secret views on American diplomacy, working on a back-channel negotiation with Sarah MacIntyre, a charismatic but controversial special envoy. As events on the ground push them deeper into role-play to try to understand the leader they are contemplating, the question of when we make bargains with violent men becomes ever more personal and a future of war or peace hangs in the balance. Set in a claustrophobic Washington D.C basement, Intelligence asks how we code and decode others and ourselves. The play was produced in 2019 as part of the New York Theatre Workshop's Next Door Series.

Writer Helen Banner said, "We've been working on Intelligence now through three different US presidential administrations and the questions of the play continue to get more pressing as we contend with multiple unfolding global conflicts. We're excited to be bringing the show to Edinburgh and exploring what hope the theater of diplomacy can still bring us."

Director Jess Chayes recently completed her tenure as BOLD Associate Artistic Director at Northern Stage, as an inaugural member of the BOLD Theater Women's Leadership Circle. She is a founding co-artistic director of The Assembly, with whom she has co-created and directed ten original productions. Recent directing includes: The Antelope Party, Latter Days and The Providence of Neighboring Bodies with Dutch Kills, Off Peak (Hudson Stage Co.), Jane Anger (Jen Campos Productions), Jordan & Venus Rising (Northern Stage), and The Flick (Warehouse Theatre), as well as new work development with Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb and The Vineyard. Jess is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect, a co-founder of New Georges Jam artists' lab, and alum of the New Georges Audrey Residency, The Civilians R&D Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Jess is the recipient of the 2017 Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and the 2019 Collaboration Award from the Women in the Arts & Media Coalition.

Helen Banner (she/they) is a playwright, audio dramatist and librettist and co-founder of the Byzantine Choral Project. They grew up in the British Channel Islands and studied at Cambridge and the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, where they completed their MFA in Dramatic Writing and was awarded the John Golden Playwriting Award. Their work has been developed at New Georges, NYTW Next Door, the Drama League, the O'Neill Theater Center, Fresh Ground Pepper, the Wild Project, Dixon Place, The Lark, the Great Plains Theatre Conference and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference

Dutch Kills Theater is a theatre company based in New York that focuses on developing and producing new writing by the most exciting emerging artists in the city. Formed in 2011, the company were previously at the Edinburgh Fringe with The Sister by Eric John Meyer and Adventure Quest by Richard Lovejoy in 2016. They followed this with the critically-acclaimed The Providence of Neighbouring Bodies by Jean Ann Douglass in 2018, and Solitary - a searing exploration of the use of solitary confinement in the US prison system by Duane Cooper and Blake Haberman - in 2019. In 2021 they performed the immersive UK premiere of Ben Beckley and Asa Wember's KlaxAlterian Sequester on demand. Dutch Kills are also presenting Temping at Assembly, The Cubicle.

Running Time: 1hr 20 mins | Suitable for ages 13+

Company information

Directed by Jess ChayesWritten by Helen Banner Set design by Carolyn Mraz

Lighting design by Jeanette Oi-Suk YewSound design by Sinan Refik Zafar

Costume design by Sophia Choi Prop design by Jess Cummings

Production Stage Managed by Allison Raynes

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