Soho Theatre, Hightide and Talawa Theatre to Present GIRLS This Autumn

Soho Theatre, HighTide and Talawa Theatre Company present Theresa Ikoko's award-winning new play Girls, the funny and fiercely passionate new play by award-winning playwright Theresa Ikoko will premiere at HighTide Festival 2016 in September before its London premiere at Soho Theatre on 27 September. The production will also run at Birmingham Rep Theatre in between those dates.

Girls was the winner of the George Devine Award (2016), the Alfred Fagon Award (2015), and was shortlisted for Soho Theatre's Verity Bargate Award (2015).

Three everyday girls, three best friends forever and three big issues: love, sex, religion. But when they're kidnapped from home, their world is turned upside down. Hope and despair blur, jokes and fights become one, and the only hashtag that now matters is survival. Girls is a new play about enduring friendship, the power of imagination and the stories behind the headlines that quickly become yesterday's news.

Theresa Ikoko wrote Girls to give a voice to girls abducted in Nigeria and around the world in conflict zones. Following Boko Haram's recent violent uprising, she became frustrated with selective media coverage on attacks that are quickly forgotten, and unreported and overlooked violence ignored by the West. This is a play about the girls in the headlines as well as those left unnoticed. With a background in criminology, she wrote the play alongside her full time job reducing involvement in youth crime and violence as part of a London Borough Gangs Team. She is a Talawa Writers' Programme Playwright and continues to work closely with Soho Theatre as part of 2016's Soho Six.

Directed by Elayce Ismail (The Rise and Shine of Comrade Fiasco, Gate Theatre; Iphigenia Quartet: Chorus, Gate Theatre; Nanjing, The Yard), Girls follows Theresa's debut play Normal which was staged at HighTide Festival in 2015.

Performances of the production at Soho Theatre are kindly supported by The London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Arts

LISTINGS:

GIRLS
Written by Theresa Ikoko
Directed by Elayce Ismail
Age Recommendation: 14+

Running Time: 90 mins without interval

HIGHTIDE FESTIVAL, ALDEBURGH, SUFFOLK
8 - 18 September (see www.hightide.org.uk)
Press Day: 10 September

Performance Times
8th September - 17:00
9th September - 12:30
10th September - 15:30
11th September - 17:00
14th September - 19:00
15th September - 14:00
16th September - 20:00
17th September - 19:00
18th September - 13:30

Tickets
£20 (£18 Concession) - 10th, 11th, 16th, 17t 18th
£10 - 9th, 14th, 15th
£1 - 8th

BRIMINGHAM REP THEATRE
20 - 24 September (see www.birmingham-rep.co.uk)

Performance Times
8pm (2.30pm Sat matinee)

SOHO THEATRE, LONDON, W1D 3NE
27 September - 29 October (see www.sohotheatre.com)
Press Night: Thu 29 Sept

Performance Times
7.15pm (3pm Thu & Sat matinees)

Tickets
from £10

Soho Theatre: Bang in the creative heart of London, Soho Theatre is a major new writing theatre and a writers' development organisation of national significance. With a programme spanning theatre, comedy, cabaret and writers' events, and home to a lively bar, Soho Theatre is one of the most vibrant venues on London's cultural scene. As entrepreneurial as it is innovative, over the last five years under the joint leadership of Soho's Artistic Director Steve Marmion and Executive Director Mark Godfrey, the charity and social enterprise has almost trebled audiences, opened a new venue and produced more work than ever before. The vision for 2015-2018 is to ambitiously expand beyond Dean Street with an additional larger new venue, a digital and TV presence, and a national and international touring programme. www.sohotheatre.com

HighTide is one of the UK's leading producers of new plays, and one of the few professional theatres focused on the production of new playwrights. Now entering its tenth year, HighTide has premiered more than sixty productions by now major playwrights including Ella Hickson, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Nick Payne, Adam Brace, Beth Steel, Sam Holcroft, Luke Barnes, Vickie Donoghue, Anders Lustgarten, Jack Thorne and Joel Horwood. www.hightide.org.uk

Talawa Theatre Company is the UK's primary Black-led theatre company. Led by Artistic Director Michael Buffong, Talawa's work is informed by the wealth and diversity of the Black British experience. For 30 years Talawa has created outstanding work by cultivating the best in emerging and established Black artists, investing in talent, developing audiences and inspiring dialogue with and within communities across the UK and internationally to enrich the cultural life of all. This April Talawa is co-producing King Lear with the Royal Exchange in Manchester in association with Birmingham Repertory Theatre. www.talawa.com

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