Toby Jones & Juliet Stevenson to Lead PLACEPRINTS at Print Room at the Coronet

Full casting is today announced for the world première of PlacePrints. Print Room at the Coronet is proud to welcome Toby Jones and Juliet Stevenson leading the company in a semi-staged production of four new dramatic works by David Rudkin, inspired by British rural landscapes and presented in associated with East Midlands touring theatre company New Perspectives. Jack McNamara also directs Richard Lynch, Hugh Ross and Frances Tomelty. The readings will take place over two nights and also complements Rudkin's new translation of Jean Genet's Deathwatch which is on at the Print Room at the Coronet from 11 April - 7 May.

Described by The Observer as "Britain's greatest living dramatic poet", New Perspectives is marking David Rudkin's 80th year with readings and audio recordings of the 10-strong series of PlacePrints, which he defined as 'traces left in a location by a moment in that location's past - a presence yearns to imprint himself upon a place, and cannot'.

PlacePrints 1 (Wednesday 20 April at 9pm) features River, of Course, which tells of a Celtic warrior who haunts the bridge by Stratford Upon Avon where once he betrayed his own people followed by The Waters and the Wild in which a lough in Ireland shares the intense and compelling relationship she once had with a young boy who used to visit her waters.

PlacePrints 2 (Thursday 21 April at 9pm) takes the listener Off the Motorway to a lonely church on a hill overlooking the M40 in Warwickshire where we are in the company of the church herself, joined by an increasingly sinister rector-like figure. The second reading pays homage to M.R. James. Grim's Ditch is a haunting tale about an arrogant academic and his encounter with a ghost is told to us by the very landscape herself.

Actor Toby Jones is following in the footsteps of both parents; his father acted in Rudkin's debut RSC production of Afore Night Come at the Arts Theatre and his mother played Mrs Arne in his television Play for Today, Penda's Fen directed by Alan Clarke in 1974. Jones will be joined by Juliet Stevenson on Thursday 21 April and screen actress Frances Tomelty heads the line-up alongside Richard Lynch and Hugh Ross on Wednesday 20 April. The readings will be accompanied by live music led by experimental violinist Angharad Davies and cohorts at the forefront of modern improvisation.

As a company whose rural roots have remained at the heart of their work for over 40 years, New Perspectives' Artistic Director Jack McNamara said today "I can think of few dramatic artists who dig as deeply into the ground as David Rudkin does. These late works are a perfect culmination of the themes he has returned to throughout his 50-year career of making radical work for stage, screen and audio. They are miniature masterpieces that make us see the British landscape through a new visionary filter.'

The PlacePrint post-show readings will be held on consecutive evenings (9pm on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 April) to coincide with performances of David Rudkin's translation of Jean Genet's Deathwatch, playing at the Print Room; tickets £5. New Perspectives plan to continue the PlacePrint series through the year.

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