New American Play THE GREAT DIVIDE to Debut at Finborough Theatre

"How do you open a door when there is no key?
You burn down the whole room...
And so I stood at The Edge of my family with two choices.
Jump through an Open Window. Or stay. And burn with the rest of them...
And so I jumped."

The world premiere of the award-winning new play The Great Divide by acclaimed new American playwright Alix Sobler runs at the Finborough Theatre, playing Sunday and Monday evenings and Tuesday matinees from Sunday, 4 September 2016 (Press Night: Monday, 5 September 2016 at 7.30pm).

Inspired by a true story. On the afternoon of Saturday, 25 March 1911, someone screamed "Fire!" on the eighth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Within ten minutes, 146 workers, many of them young women - and most refugees from some of the world's most oppressed countries - lay dead, either on the floor of the sweatshop or on the street eight storeys below.

Winner of the 2015 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition, and a finalist in the 2015 Henley Rose Playwriting Competition for Women, The Great Divide tells the individual stories of just a few of these doomed young female workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Full of heart, music and history, The Great Divide is an emotional and heartfelt insight into the immigrant and refugee experience of the early 20th Century, and those who paid the ultimate price for seeking opportunity and a new life across the ocean.

Playwright Alix Sobler is a writer and performer from New York City and Canada. Her play The Secret Annex was produced in 2014 at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, received a public reading at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2015 and was produced at the Segal Centre in Montreal earlier this year. The script is published in Canada by Scirroco Press. Alix Sobler is the author of five solo shows which she has toured extensively throughout Canada and the United States. She has had work read or produced in theatres across North America including Theatre Seven, Chicago; Mad & Merry Theater Company, New York City; Winnipeg Jewish Theatre; Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg; Brown Trinity Playwright's Rep, Providence, Rhode Island; The Tank, New York City; Theatre Or, Minneapolis; Looking Glass Theatre, New York City; Elmwood Playhouse, Nyack, New York; and Intrepid Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia. She is a graduate oF Brown University and will receive an MFA in Playwriting at Columbia University in 2017.

Director Rory McGregor is British theatre director currently based in New York City. Trained in Theatre Directing at Columbia University under the tutelage of Anne Bogart, he is an Artistic Associate of Classic Stage Company and a Directing Mentor at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, and will be joining the Roundabout Theatre in the autumn as the Artistic Apprentice. In New York City, direction includes Balm in Gilead, The Unfinished Life of Bertolt Brecht and Ward Six (all at the Schapiro Theatre, Columbia Stages). He is also a playwright, having written as well as directed The Unfinished Life of Bertolt Brecht and Ward Six. He is currently further developing Ward Six and a new play Gil under the mentorship of David Henry Hwang. Rory has also directed plays around the UK including The Greenville Ghost (Theatre503 and C Venues, Edinburgh Festival), Contrast and God of Carnage (both at the Edinburgh Festival). This is his second collaboration with playwright Alix Sobler having worked together last year developing sleep wake hope and then, a short play based on the E.E. Cummings poem anyone lived in a pretty how town.

The cast is:

Josh Collins | Jacob/Avram.
Trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes Richard III (Almeida Theatre), Bully Boy (Mercury Theatre, Colchester) and Romeo and Juliet (Riverside Studios).
Film includes Between the Lines, Our Shining Sword, The River and Loulou.
Television includes Doctors.

Hannah Genesius | Rosa
Trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School where she was the winner of a Carleton Hobbs BBC Bursary Award.
Theatre includes Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare in the Squares), Telescope (Testbed1), London Road (Bristol Old Vic), and The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (Redgrave Theatre, Bristol).
Theatre whilst training includes Normal, The Merchant of Venice and Three Sisters.
Film includes London Road.
Radio includes Homefront, A Christmas Carol, The Archers, The Rivals and the five part Doctor Who adventure Doctor Who: The Genesis Chamber.

Michael Kiersey | Max/Papa/Lustig/Samuel Gompers/Policeman/Judge/Others
Trained at Drama Centre, London, and the Boris Schukin Institute, Moscow.
Theatre includes An Apple A Day, The Playboy of the Western World, So An Englishman Walks Into An Irish Bar (London Irish Rep), Our House: The Madness Musical (Olympia Theatre, Dublin), Cinderella (University Concert Hall, Limerick) and High School Musical (Liberty Hall, Dublin).
Film includes Love to Leave.
Television includes Wurky World, Vikings and Crimecall.
Music Videos include Blonde featuring Craig David's Nothing Like This.
Concerts include Rhythm of the Dance, The Late Late Show, The Voice of Ireland and Christmas on Broadway.

Emma King | Manya
Trained at Central School of Speech and Drama.
Theatre includes Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 (Royal Shakespeare Company and Brooklyn Academy Of Music, New York City) Death Of A Salesman (Royal Shakespeare Company and Noël Coward Theatre), The Wall (The Hope Theatre), A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It (Sprite Productions), The Hairy Ape (Southwark Playhouse), Blondie (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh), Timon Of Athens, Round 2 and Cymbeline (The Factory), A Will And No Will and Miss In Her Teens (White Bear Theatre), 50/50 (Hampstead Theatre), Butter No Parsnips (Arcola Theatre), Phaedre (Edinburgh Festival), Three Sisters, Too Late For Logic and Cinderella (Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh) and The Tempest (Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh).
Film includes Two Down, Miss In Her Teens, End Of The Road and Blooded.

Miztli Rose Neville | Sadie/Sophie/Clara/Others
Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Theatre includes How The Vote Was One and Pot Kettle (Bloomsbury Festival) and The Pursuit of App-iness (RADA Festival).
Film include Crown for Christmas and Birdwatching.
Miztli is the founder of the monthly scratch event CreativeNights.

IF YOU GO:

THE GREAT DIVIDE

PRESS NIGHT: MONDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2016 AT 7.30PM
Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20 September 2016
Sunday and Monday evenings at 7.30pm. Tuesday matinees at 2.00pm.

At Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED

Box Office 0844 847 1652 Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Tickets £18, £16 concessions.

Performance Length: Approximately 90 minutes with no interval.

To post a comment, you must register and login.