Full Casting Announced For YOU STUPID DARKNESS!

Paines Plough and Theatre Royal Plymouth have today announced the full cast for YOU STUPID DARKNESS!, a World Premiere from Sam Steiner (Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons; Kanye the First), directed by Paines Plough Joint Artistic Director James Grieve. The new play, set in a call centre for Brightline helpline, looks at the struggle for optimism and community amid the chaos of a collapsing world. The cast includes David Carlyle, Andrew Finnigan, Becci Gemmell and Lydia Larson. The production marks the continuation of a long-standing relationship between Paines Plough and Theatre Royal Plymouth and follows the success of Love, Love, Love and The Angry Brigade.

Everything's been falling apart for a while now. In a cramped, crumbling office four volunteers spend a few hours every Tuesday night on the phone to strangers telling them everything is going to be ok. As the outside world disintegrates around them, Frances, Joey, Angie and Jon teeter on the edge of their own personal catastrophes. Their hopes and fears become entangled as they try, desperately, to connect with the callers and with each other.

"Hello. Brightline. You're through to someone you can talk to..."

James Grieve said: "I am honoured and thrilled to be working with Sam on this extraordinary new play. At an epochal moment when our world feels so unsettled, confusing, oppositional and angry, Sam has written a beautiful, funny, humane play that celebrates kindness, compassion and the indomitable human spirit in the face of uncertainty and fear. It is wonderfully witty, wise, joyful and deeply moving writing that adds up to an unerringly prescient, utterly compelling, vitally important new play about staring at a world we no longer recognise, and which sometimes scares us half to death.

Sam Steiner was the recipient of our Playwright Fellowship 2016 in acknowledgement of his rare brilliance as an emerging playwright and this play confirms him an electrifying new voice in British Theatre. I am hugely excited to continue Paines Plough's 40 year relationship with Theatre Royal Plymouth to present another World Premiere by a major writer following in the footsteps of many previous co-productions like Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur, Rona Munro's Long Time Dead, Mike Bartlett's Love, Love, Love and James Graham's The Angry Brigade."

Sam Steiner is a playwright and screenwriter from Manchester. Sam's debut play, the award-winning Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, was produced by Walrus Theatre (a company he cofounded). It has had three sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and toured nationally. The play has since been produced all over the world in seven different languages. Sam's second play, Kanye The First, was commissioned and produced by Hightide and premiered at the festival in September 2017. Other pieces of Sam's work have been showcased at the Royal Exchange, Soho Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Sala Beckett in Barcelona and the Cannes and London Film Festivals. He completed an attachment at Paines Plough as their Playwright Fellowship and holds an MA in Screenwriting from the National Film and Television School. Sam is currently developing television projects with Drama Republic and Euston North.

James Grieve is Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough, the UK's National Theatre of new plays. For Paines Plough he has directed Pop Music by Anna Jordan, Out Of Love by Elinor Cook, Black Mountain by Brad Birch, How To Be A Kid by Sarah McDonald Hughes, Broken Biscuits and Jumpers For Goalposts by Tom Wells, Happiness by Nick Payne (BBC Radio 3), The Angry Brigade by James Graham, An Intervention and Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett, Hopelessly Devoted and Wasted by Kate Tempest, The Sound Of Heavy Rain by Penelope Skinner, You Cannot Go Forward From Where You Are Right Now by David Watson, Tiny Volcanoes by Laurence Wilson and Fly Me To The Moon by Marie Jones. His freelance work includes the new musical The Assassination Of Katie Hopkins for Theatr Clywd, a new production of Les Miserables for Wermland Opera in Sweden and Brian Friel's Translations which won Best Production at the UK Theatre Awards 2014. James was formerly founder and Joint Artistic Director of nabokov with George Perrin, and Associate Director at the Bush Theatre.

David Carlyle's (Jon) theatre credits includes: The Tell Tale Heart (National Theatre); The Outsider (L'Etranger) (The Print Room); Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh); The Government Inspector (Birmingham Rep and Tour); To Kill A Mockingbird (Regents Park Open Air Theatre, UK Tour, Barbican Theatre); Victoria (Dundee Rep); Somersaults (Finborough Theatre); Yellow Moon (National Theatre of Scotland); Hansel and Gretel (Citizens Theatre); Dead Heavy Fantastic (Liverpool Everyman); The Monster In The Hall (Glasgow Citizens / Traverse Theatre); Caledonia (National Theatre of Scotland); The Wonderful World Of Dissocia (Unicorn Theatre); The White Devil (Shakespeare's Globe - Sam Wanamaker Festival). Television includes: Bodyguard (BBC); Lip Service (Kudos). Radio includes: Kitchen Confidential (BBC Radio 4); Behind Her Eyes (Sweet Talk / BBC Radio); The Stroma Sessions (BBC Radio 3); Chernobyl (Sweet Talk / BBC)

Andrew Finnigan (Joey) trained with The Customs House, South Shields and Project A at the Theatre Royal Newcastle. His theatre credits include: The Fifteen Streets (The Customs House, South Shields); Scrapbook (Live Theatre, Newcastle); Broken Biscuits (Live Theatre/Paines Plough and UK tour); Wormtown (The Customs House, South Shields); My Uncle Freddie (The Customs House, South Shields) and most recently Drip (Boundless Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, UK Tour and the Bush).

Becci Gemmell's (Frances) theatre credits includes: Eyam, The Winter's Tale, Comedy Of Errors, Taming Of The Shrew (Globe Theatre); The Here And This And Now, Forever House (Plymouth Drum); Noises Off (Nottingham Playhouse/Northern Stage/Nuffield); Walking The Tightrope (Offstage); Much Ado About Nothing (Manchester Royal Exchange); 65 Miles (Paines Plough/Hull Truck); Once Upon A Time In Wigan (Hull Truck); Taming Of The Shrew (Sprite); Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre); Foxfinder (Papatango/Finborough); Eurydice (ATC/Young Vic); Lark Rise To Candleford (Kenwright); All I Want For Christmas (Theatre 503); As You Like It (Dash Arts/Curve Theatre); Fucked (Tangram Theatre/Old Red Lion/Assembly Rooms); Is Everyone Ok? (Nabokov/Watford Palace/Plymouth Drum); How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found (Southwark Playhouse); Mad, Funny, Just (Creased/Old Vic New Voices/Theatre 503); Uncertainty (Sincera Productions/Latitude Festival); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oxford Shakespeare Company); Air Guitar (Bristol Old Vic Studio); Anniversary (Old Vic New Voices - 24 Hour Plays); Much Ado About Nothing (Guildford Shakespeare Company); Volpone (Present Moment). TV & Film includes: Doctors; Call The Midwife; Casualty; Code Of A Killer; Land Girls; Red Lights; Home Time; Angel Of Death.

Lydia Larson's (Angie) theatre credits include: Finding Fassbender (Pleasance Courtyard); Electra (The Bunker); Brutal Cessation (Theatre 503); Skin A Cat (The Bunker) - Offie shortlisted Best Actress; Travesty (Fight in the Dog Ltd.); A Super Happy Story (Silent Uproar); Skin A Cat (Vault Festival); We Have Fallen (InSite Performance (Underbelly)); The After-Dinner Joke (Orange Tree); Springs Eternal (Orange Tree); Everybody's Doing It (Arcola (Miniaturists); Persuasion (Salisbury Playhouse); Boomerang (Old Vic 24 Hour Plays); Pride And Prejudice (Theatre Royal Bath and Number One Tour); Arcadia (Sonia Friedman Productions). Television includes: Doctors (BBC); Three Minute Wonders: Routes (Channel 4); Kidnapped (Prospect Pictures).

You Stupid Darkness! is a new play by Sam Steiner directed by James Grieve with design by Amy Jane Cook, lighting design by Peter Small, movement by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster and sound design by Dominic Kennedy. Freddie Crossley is the Assistant Director.

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