Pentabus Reveals New Season Of Work For Summer and Autumn
Learn more about the full lineup here!
By: Stephi Wild Jun. 08, 2023
Pentabus has announced their 2023 Summer/Autumn Season which features one new commission, one new digital theatre online release, four new Associate Artists and the return of Pentabus Young Writers live production with seven new brilliant plays.
Pentabus is the nation's rural theatre company. They are the only professional theatre company in the UK whose vision is singularly rural. Their work brings communities together, bringing outstanding productions with sector leading creative teams, directly to isolated rural communities in village halls, libraries, community centres, festivals & theatres, as well as platforming rural stories in urban settings. Over five decades they've produced over 300 new plays, supported 120 playwrights and reached over half a million audience members. They've won awards and created lasting relationships with artists, venues and audiences across the country, and were the first to live stream from a village hall. They excel at finding & nurturing new talent & have hosted Writer in Residences since 2014. These playwrights have gone on to be commissioned by the Birmingham Rep, Bristol Old Vic, Hampstead Theatre, HighTide, Manchester Royal Exchange, Nottingham Playhouse, Royal Court, The Bush, and The National Theatre.
Elle While, Pentabus Artistic Director said: “I am so excited by our upcoming season of work. It is an absolute honour to be sharing our filmed co-production of DESTINY by the extraordinary Florence Espeut-Nickless. She is fearless, warm, honest and hilarious and I can't wait to be able to share her story nationwide. It's for all the women and girls who don't get heard. Our Local Young Writers are busy creating magic with their first time plays and I am delighted to be joining my friend and collaborator Neil Bettles with his brilliant company ThickSkin to bring to life the mythical, political powerhouse that is Driftwood by Tim Foley. Our new associates add even more intelligence, wit and imagination to our team and I am thrilled that they are joining us.”
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
by Pentabus Young Writers
Thurs 6 & Fri 7 July 2023
Ludlow Assembly Rooms
https://pentabus.co.uk/where-do-we-go-here
We could go back to 'normal'. Or was normal the problem? No one really knows. So tell me, where do we go from here?
Where Do We Go From Here? Is a funny, honest and vibrant celebration of diverse voices exploring unique perspectives on the world we live in. Created and produced by leading artists with Pentabus Theatre.
Andrew Sterry –Director
Andrew is the Audiences and Engagement Manager at Pentabus and an Associate Artist at the Sherman Theatre. He trained as an actor and theatre director at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. As a director, he has worked with companies and communities across Wales and the UK and makes original theatre and performance with and about the people who are involved in each project. He collaborates with artists, performers, musicians, museums, charities and schools and creates work in a range of spaces from day centres and care homes to community centres and theatres. Recent theatre includes; Me, Myself and I (University of Wales); Love Cardiff: City Road Stories and Home (Sherman Theatre).
Elle While (she/her) - Director
Elle is the Artistic Director of Pentabus Theatre and an Associate Artist of Shakespeare's Globe she received an MFA in Theatre Directing from Birkbeck College.
Directing includes One Of Them Ones & Idyll (Pentabus); As You Like It (cbeebies); Private Peaceful (Nottingham Playhouse & UK Tour); The Silence and The Noise & Destiny (Pentabus/Rural Media); Blue Stockings (Storyhouse); The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It and Hamlet (Shakespeare's Globe); 2017/2018 Revival director UK and International tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and West End (Gielgud); What The Moon Saw (2Faced Dance); Dance Nation, Blindsided and RAGE- UK Premiere (RWCMD); Wretch (Shoreditch Church and tour of London homeless shelters); Glory Dazed (Soho Theatre, Adelaide Festival and Underbelly, Edinburgh-Winner of Holden St. Theatre award and Critics Choice award); Country Music (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Frisky and Manish: Just Too Much (Udderbelly, London and Edinburgh); That Face (BOVTS); and recording director for the Old Vic's production of Cause Celebre on Radio 4.
Ruby Brown (she/her) - Designer
Ruby Brown is a performance designer and theatre maker based in Cardiff and Bristol. She recently graduated with a BA in Design for Performance from The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She is excited by work for young audiences and the visual design challenges the work presents.
James McKenzie (he/him) - Lighting Designer & Production Manager
Available upon request
DRIFTWOOD
A new play by Tim Foley
https://pentabus.co.uk/driftwood
Touring 12 October – 19 November 2023
Two brothers on a beach need to figure out what to do with their dad - but the sea has other ideas. These are the shores of Vikings, Victorians, van drivers and visions. The tide is out but the chips are hot. Mark and Tiny go for walks along the beach at Seaton Carew. Their dad is dying, and their town is crumbling. Family rifts and political divides try to pull them apart, and a figure made of driftwood stalks the shore at night… An inspiring, expansive story about hope, love, belonging and the tides within us.
Pentabus and ThickSkin present this intoxicating and mystical new play by award-winning writer Tim Foley in a distinctive physical and cinematic production.
Suitable for ages 12+
70 minutes
When Pentabus approached Tim Foley to write a new play, Tim knew what he wanted to write…
“I'm delighted to be heading home with my new play Driftwood. North East England has coastlines that get under your skin, and I wanted to write the kind of story that lets you taste the salt in the air and gets sand between your toes. This tale, with its bickering brothers and ancient myths and bags full of chips, is as wild and varied as the landscape that bore it - so join us in celebrating an area and confronting the forces that are working against it.”
Tim Foley (he/him) - Writer
Tim Foley is an award-winning writer for theatre and audio drama based in Manchester. He was Pentabus' Channel 4 Writer-in-Residence in 2016, when he wrote Electric Rosary(winner of the 2017 Bruntwood Prize Judges' Award; premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2022). Other theatre credits include Astronauts of Hartlepool (2017 VAULT Festival, winner of the VAULT Origins Award for Outstanding New Work); The Dogs of War (Old Red Lion Theatre, 2015). He won the 2016 OffWestEnd award for Most Promising New Playwright.
Tim also writes audio drama set in the worlds of Doctor Who for Big Finish Productions. His original podcast, North West Footwear Database, was featured on BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Elle While (she/her) - Co-Director
As above
Neil Bettles (he/him) - Co-Director
Neil is a Theatre Director, Choreographer and Movement Director. As co-founder and Artistic Director of ThickSkin, his directing credits include How Not To Drown, Chalk Farm, The Static, Blackout, Boy Magnet, White Noise. Recent work includes Movement Director for James IV, Queen Of The Fight, (Raw Material and Capital Theatres) Scottish tour 2022. Choreographer for Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks, UK and Ireland tour 21/22. Movement Director for Private Peaceful, UK tour 2022. Neil was Associate Director for Frantic Assembly and was nominated for the Off West End award for Best Director for The Unreturning (2019). As Movement Director, Carmen (Opera Wuppertal, Germany); The James Plays 1, 2 & 3 (National Theatre of Scotland, EIF and National Theatre); Blood Wedding and The Bacchae (Royal & Derngate). As Associate Movement Director, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 2016 - 2021; Heisenberg (Wyndhams Theatre); The Light Princess (National Theatre) and The Full Monty (Sheffield Theatres and West End).
LuLu Tam (TBC) – Designer
Lulu Tam is a visiting Lecturer at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and teaching fellow at University of Salford. Theatre credits include: The Killing of Sister George (Told by An Idiot & New Vic Theatre); A Pretty Shitty Love ( Theatr Clwyd); The Prince/ (Southwark Playhouse); This is Paradise (Traverse Theatre); Seeds (NoStone Theatre & Pleasance Theatre); Red/Chaos (ArtsEd); Lit (Nottingham Playhouse / High Tide Festival); Funeral Flowers (Harts Theatre Co. at The Bunker); Invincible (Original Theatre Company (UK Tour & Off Broadway). A Winter's Tale ( Les Kurbas Theatre).Lulu's work has featured in the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (2011, 2015 & 2019) and London Art Biennale (2015). She was a finalist of Linbury Prize, and the winner of Taking the Stage supported by British Council Ukraine, 2015. She was a selected designer at World Stage Design 2017, Taipei. And recently won the Naomi Wilkinson Award for Stage Design 2022.
Charly Dunford (TBC) - Lighting Designer
Charly graduated from Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.
Charly's credits include Blood Harmony (ThickSkin); Vagina Cake (Hope Mill Theatre); Silla (Leeds Opera Festival); Little Red Robbin Hood (Battersea Arts Centre); Wild Swimming (Theatre on the Downs); Séance (The Station); A Very Odd Birthday Party(Hawkseed Theatre).
Assistant Lighting Designer credits: Cabaret (Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse); What's New Pussycat (Birmingham Rep).
Relighter: Vortex (Russel Maliphant Dance Company); Shades of Blue (Matsena Productions); Good Grief (Ugly Bucket).
Associate Lighting Design: Curtain Up (Theatr Clwyd); Shades of Blue (Matsena Productions); The Sorcerer's Apprentice(Northern Stage); STUFFED (Ugly Bucket).
Lee Affen (he/him) - Sound Designer
Lee is a multi-instrumentalist composer, music producer and sound designer from Manchester now based in Sheffield. He has an extensive record in producing high quality creative content in theatre, dance and film, with years of experience in making productions and installations around the country.
Credits include: Who Are Yer? (Cardboard Citizens ); Jadek (Imagine If); The War Within (Fallen Angels / Birmingham Royal Ballet); Fargone (John-Rwoth Omack / Utopia Theatre); Too Much World at Once (BBC Radio 3 and New Voices, Box Of Tricks); Birds and Bees (Theatre Centre); Outskirts (The Bare Project); Where Two Rivers Meet (The British Library (film)); Cotton (About Time Dance Theatre) Othello (Demi-Paradise Productions); Hansel and Gretel (Paperfinch / Theatr Clwyd); The Box (Hawkdance Theatre); Outside the Igloo (The Knotted Project); Ladies that Bus (The Dukes); Anna Hibiscus' Song (Utopia Theatre).
Lee has also composed and performed original live scores for silent films Metropolis, Nosferatu and The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Lee is a company member of The Bare Project and an Associate Artist with Imagine If Theatre, Box of Tricks Theatre and Utopia Theatre.
DESTINY
performed and written by Florence Espeut-Nickless
(hybrid theatre/film)
https://pentabus.co.uk/destiny
Online Release: 31 August – 5 October 2023
A new digital play, exploring where film and theatre meet, opening the door to a teenage experience of growing up in rural Wiltshire in the 00’s. Destiny dreams big. She dreams glamour. She's gonna be an MTV Base backing dancer, you watch. She's fearless, ferocious, and up for the fight (she's had to be). Born below the breadline, she's desperate to see beyond the neighbourhood and find hope in hopelessness. DESTINY, is a powerful, funny and moving monologue written and performed by Florence Espeut-Nickless, which takes us on a journey of a teenage girl’s experience and response to abuses of power in many guises.
A Pentabus & Rural Media production
Florence Espeut-Nickless (she/her) Writer
Rachel Lambert (she/her) Director
Elle While (she/her) Director
Katie Sykes Production Designer
Em Smith Producer
Mari Yamamura Director of Photography
Kathryn McCanny Make-up Artist
Justin Dolby Sound Design
Alex Fraser Composer
Julie Colman Head of Production
Grant Black Executive Producer
Cast
Florence Espeut-Nickless (she/her) Actor
Florence Espeut-Nickless (she/her) – Writer & Performer
Florence is a writer and actor from Chippenham in Wiltshire, a town with no theatre and limited access to it. She writes for both stage and screen about and with working class communities in the South-West in the hope of making the arts more accessible to everyone, regardless of background and geographical location. She is the Clive Richards’ Foundation Writer-in-Residence at Pentabus; an Open Session Writer at Bristol Old Vic and an associate artist at Strike a Light, as part of their Let Artists Be Artists programme.
Her debut play DESTINY which toured the South West in 2021-22, will be at Underbelly over the Edinburgh Fringe 2022. Florence was commissioned to write Miracle on 34 Seymour Street for Trowbridge Town Hall for Christmas 2021. She is developing another play, Blinded by Your Grace, with support from MAYK, Strike a Light, Wiltshire Creative and Wild Child. Florence is also one of five writers working on the re-telling of The Odyssey for The National Theatre. She is developing a TV pilot South West Side with support from Wild Child and Oliver Lansley.
Rachel Lambert (she/her) -Co-Director
Rachel Lambert is a RTS award winning writer, theatre and film director/producer who has had productions at the ICA, the Arnolfini, The Everyman, Cheltenham, The Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Edinburg Festival, Theatre Royal Bath and opened The Egg with an original commission. She has directed and produced films for BBC, Ch4 and Sky Arts as well as Booker, Macmillan and Women’s Aid. She has an eye for detail and storytelling and embraces a collaborative approach to the process, working closely with actors and cinematographers to promote trust, understanding and a clear visual language.
Elle While (she/her) - Co-Director
As above
Associate Artists
Alessandra Davisson
Alessandra is a director from Birmingham, also working as a freelance dramaturg and photographer. She is currently the Resident Assistant Director at The Donmar Warehouse, as well as being a board member of Stage Sight and a reader for The Royal Court Theatre and Park Theatre. Most recently, she directed a cast of inmates at HMP Spring Hill for Kestrel Theatre Company’s Christmas show.
As Director: Carbon and Tipping Point (Readings in translation at Royal Court Theatre, co-produced by the Italian Cultural Institute and PAV/Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe); Tamzara (Unge Viken Theatre Company); SCRATCH (Harold Pinter Theatre with The Jamie Lloyd EMERGE Company); Ephemera (Living Archive: Royal Court Theatre); Three Sisters (Lyric Hammersmith - EMERGE Programme); Call me Maybe (recorded short at the Arcola Theatre); Hatch (Baron’s Court Theatre); By Way of Kensal Green (Theatre 503); Drylands (Tramshed); SWAY - a live action audio play (Virtual Collaborators); Hot Off Da Press and Three Wishes (both as director of the Lyric Hammersmith’s START Company, also co-writer).
As Assistant and Associate Director: Private Lives (Donmar Warehouse), Two Palestinians Go Dogging (Royal Court Theatre); A Number (The Old Vic); Idyll (Pentabus Theatre); Torch Song (Turbine Theatre); Me for the World (The Young Vic) and CARE (The Pappy Show).
Liv Fowler
Liv is a working-class poet & playwright from South London. Her work focuses on the class system and gender. She enjoys pushing boundaries and making the audience question their biases.
Liv was a part of Pentabus’ National Young Writers Company in 2020/21, writing a short audio play exploring the issues of sexual assault and consent. This was accepted for 13 Submissions new writing night in July 2022 and performed at The Other Palace Theatre. Liv reached the semi-finals of The Roundhouse’s Slam Poetry competition in July 2021 and at the beginning of last year received Arts Council England funding for R&D on a play she wrote exploring the relationship between class, mental health & opportunity.
The beginning of this year, Liv created her own comedic poetry event called ‘Rhymes & Stitches’ which encourages comedic poetry. Recently, Liv headlined at Bring Your Own Bars Boxpark Wembley and has just finished her first writing commission for BBC Radio 4.
Aled Gomer
Aled Gomer is a working-class actor and writer from Cardiff. He is a recent graduate from the acting programme at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and previously trained at Drama Centre London. Aled is also the recipient of the Garrick Award and Carne Trust Award for demonstrating considerable acting talent. He has been a participant on the writer’s programme for the Young Artists Festival at The Other Room, also the Local Young Writers Group with Pentabus and is currently a participant on the National Writers Group with Pentabus. Aled is currently cultivating his skills and knowledge in improvisation and devising, with the hope to imbed these tools in his rehearsal and writing process.
His acting credits include
Edward ii, The 39 Steps, Macbeth, The Welkin and Mad Margot (Richard Burton Company).
Nickie Miles Wildin
Nickie Miles-Wildin is a theatre and radio director who loves telling stories that are full of hope, connection, community and that challenge the structures of ordinary storytelling, reaching audiences that are sometimes excluded from theatre spaces and even stories. Her work challenges the preconceptions around disability and Nickie aims to put those narratives centre stage through her passion of new writing and devising.
Nickie was previously Joint Artistic Director and CEO of DaDa, Associate Director at Graeae Theatre Company where she was Head of New Writing.
In 2014 Nickie co-founded TwoCan, Gloucestershire’s first disabled led theatre company.
Recent theatre credits include Tuning In (Miles-Wildin & Ng Productions with Theatre By The Lake and Graeae), Jekyll & Hyde (MST), Alien Nation (Hope Mill), Little Bits Of Ruined Beauty (Pentabus), Fly The Flag (National Theatre and FUEL), Leave The Light On For Me (Mind The Gap), Kerbs (Graeae Theatre / Belgrade Theatre), When This Is Over, Cuttin’ It and The Tempest @Abraham Moss (Royal Exchange Theatre), The Iron Man (Graeae /Spark Arts) The Forest of Forgotten Discos (Contact Theatre)
Online work: Crips Without Constraints Parts One & Two (Graeae), MMXX & ConnectFest (Royal Exchange Theatre)
Audio: Love Across The Ages (BBC Radio4 & Naked Productions – nominated Best Radio Drama at ARIAS 2023), The Night Of The Living Flatpacks (Naked Productions), Ghost Pine (Audible x Lamda)
Coming up: The Little Big Things (Associate Director & Dramaturg)
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