RE:HOME and More Set for The Yard Theatre's 2016 Season

Following another critically successful year, The Yard's Artistic Director Jay Miller is delighted to announce plans for Spring through to Summer 2016.

The season will tackle local and global issues of displacement, identity and belonging with two world premieres, the return of The Yard's NOW festival and a special one-week run of this year's George Devine winner Charlene James' urgent new play Cuttin' It, as part of the Royal Court/Young Vic co-production with Sheffield Theatres and Birmingham Rep.

Now in its fifth year of programming, The Yard continues to work alongside and develop leading voices in theatre and has firmly established itself as an important venue for provocative thought and challenging enquiry.

Artistic Director Jay Miller said 'In the four years since we opened in 2011, what we initially envisaged as being a temporary theatre has now become a permanent fixture, thriving, in its own right, against London's bustling cultural backdrop. The work we have developed for our next season will tackle issues of displacement, ethnicity and belonging. The work is provocative, they ask questions of today, they challenge how we make theatre, and they expose subjects, people and conversations that are too important to be on our cultural periphery. The past four years have been great. We are proud of what we have achieved. But this is The Yard and our concerns lie in today and the future.'

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Offstage Theatre with Paul Jellis and The Yard Theatre presents

Re:Home

Created by Offstage Theatre

Directed by Cressida Brown and designed by Georgia Lowe

Produced by Paul Jellis

Tuesday 9 February to Saturday 5 March, 8pm

PRESS NIGHT: Friday 12 February, 8pm

Our homes belong to us.

Ten years ago residents of the Beaumont Estate Towers in Leyton looked on as their homes were dismantled brick by brick. Re:Home sequels Cressida Brown's 2006 production, Home, made and performed before people were moved out of the towers. In 2016, Cressida revisits the Beaumont Estate to make a show about what our homes mean to us today. Using testimonies collected from former and current residents of the estate, Re:Home documents fraying relationships in the changing landscape of East London.

Winner of the Kevin Spacey Foundation Artists of Choice Award- UK Theatre Award, Re:Home is a show brimming with urgency and compassion, giving a voice to a community that no longer exists.

Full casting will be announced shortly.

The Yard Theatre presents

Made Visible

Written by Deborah Pearson

Tuesday 15 March - Saturday 9 April, 8pm

PRESS NIGHT: Friday 18 March, 8pm

"Who said anything about a racial lens?"

Deborah has no idea how to talk about the fact that she's white, and she wonders why that is. In part written and devised with performers, based on a "real encounter" in Victoria Park, this is a play written by a white woman, inspired by a conversation with two other women who happened not to be white. Nothing will be solved, and everything will be messy. This is not about guilt and confessions, but honesty, privilege and accountability. However far that can get us.

Made Visible is a new play by award winning artist Deborah Pearson. Deborah Pearson is founder and co-director of UK based Forest Fringe. Her past credits include the recently published piece The Future Show, which toured internationally for two years, and Like You Were Before, winner of a Herald Angel, and shortlisted for the Total Theatre Award for Innovation.

Full casting will be announced shortly.

NOW '16

Tuesday 10 May - Saturday 11 June, 7.30pm

The Yard's respected NOW festival returns with NOW '16, celebrating fresh and ground breaking new work. Over five weeks, The Yard will provide a platform for an eclectic mix of potent and exciting new visions, questioning the world today and interrogating theatrical form, in a double-bill of performances each week. Challenging and unapologetically risky, NOW '16 is an opportunity to see unheard artists for the first time alongside more experienced artists trying something totally new.

NOW '16 will feature Dog Kennel Hill Project, Emma Frankland, Ira Brand, Jude Christian and Chris Goode with his avant garde performance boy band, Ponyboy Curtis.

A Royal Court/Young Vic co-production

with The Yard, Sheffield Theatres and Birmingham Rep presents

Cuttin' It

Written by Charlene James

Directed by Gbolahan Obisesan

Designed by Joanna Scotcher

Tuesday 26 - Saturday 30 July, 8pm

'We're opposites, even though we came from the same, she's nuttin like me, an that shames me.'

Teenagers Muna and Iqra get the same bus to school but they've never really spoken. Muna wears TopShop and sits on the top deck gossiping about Nicki Minaj's latest spat, while Iqra sits alone downstairs in her charity shop hand-me-downs. They were both born in Somalia but come from completely different worlds. But as they get closer, they realise that their families share a painful secret. A new play by Charlene James tackling the urgent issue of FGM in Britain.

Charlene James won the Alfred Fagon and George Devine Awards for Cuttin' It. She is a playwright and an actor who trained at Birmingham School of Acting and The School at Steppenwolf, Chicago. In 2008, she participated in the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers Programme and in 2012 she was selected to be one of the 503 Five at Theatre 503. In 2013 Charlene became a writer in residence at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre for their season focusing on mental health. Her play, Tweet Tweet, was commissioned by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre as part of Young Theatre Makers and premiered there before touring.

As a writer Gbolahan Obisesan's credits include Pigeon English (Bristol Old Vic), Mad about the Boy (Edinburgh Festival, Unicorn, Bush, Young Vic) and Hold It Up (National Youth Theatre/Soho). As a writer and director his credits include How Nigeria Became, A Story and A Spear that Didn't Work (Unicorn). Other directing credits include We Are Proud to Present... and Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre); Songs Inside (Gate Theatre); Eye/Balls and Hold It Up (Soho Theatre); and 200 Years (Watford Palace Theatre). He was also awarded the Bulldog Princep Bursary as Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio 2008-09 Fringe First Award. He is currently Genesis Fellow of the Young Vic.

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The Yard Theatre is located at Unit 2A Queen's Yard, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, London E9 5EN. Buy tickets online at www.theyardtheatre.co.uk. Previews: £12.50/10 conc.; £15 / £12.50 concs.

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