Tricycle Theatre Announces Future Programming Ahead of the Reopening of the Theatre

With the annual Tricycle Takeover due to open next month, Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham today announces the company's forthcoming work ahead of the reopening of the building in spring 2018.

This summer, Mikel Murfi returns with his production of The Man in The Woman's Shoes, which was a sell-out success at the Tricycle last year, playing in rep with his brand new play, I Hear You and Rejoice in the Tricycle cinema space.

Rubasingham's Olivier award-winning production of Moira Buffini's hit play Handbagged will receive its US première at the Round House Theatre in Washington DC as part of the 2018 Women's Voices Theater Festival - the world's largest festival dedicated to new work by women.

In a first for the company, the Tricycle Theatre will partner with the National Theatre in a co-production of the world première of The Great Wave which won its playwright, Francis Turnly, the Catherine Johnson Award (2016). Rubasingham directs the production, which opens at the National Theatre in Spring 2018. Turnly was the Channel 4 Playwright in Residence at the Tricycle Theatre in 2015.

The Tricycle cinema space also plays hosts to Inua Ellams' An Evening with an Immigrant; and comedy nights presented by Upfront as part of their 25th anniversary season.

TRICYCLE TAKEOVER

Tricycle Takeover returns for its 4th year with its most ambitious programme to date. Six venues across the borough will host more than 25 free events, screenings, performances and masterclasses across a 13 day period in April. During the Takeover, young people from across London will be invited to get involved as audiences, workshop participants and performers.

Headlining Takeover 2017 are six new plays The Invisible Boy; 24 Hours; Almost, But Not Quite; We Too, Are Giants; Buried; and Mission Improbable, written for six new theatre companies exploring themes of community, the expectations of society and coming of age. Eleven professional playwrights and directors from across the industry have been leading the projects, including names such as Tinuke Craig, Chino Odimba and Somalia Seaton.

The programme of events and masterclasses include Film in a Day; Stage Combat; Podcast Drama Workshop; Puppetry; Mapping Futures Q&A - Creativity in Brent, with Andre Anderson, Dilan Dattani and Indhu Rubasingham; and a special talk with Mariah Idrissi, the first hijab wearing model to sign to a major agency from Wembley Park.

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE

THE MAN IN THE WOMAN'S SHOES & I HEAR YOU AND REJOICE

Written and performed by Mikel Murfi

Summer 2017

Mikel Murfi returns to the Tricycle following the sell-out success of The Man in The Woman's Shoes in 2016 to present a further run of the production in rep with his new one man show I Hear You and Rejoice.

Late in life, Pat Farnon, a cobbler and all-round contented man, marries the redoubtable Kitsy Rainey. It's a match made in heaven, in more ways than one.

Written and performed by Mikel Murfi, I Hear You and Rejoice is a tender and joy filled account of a most unlikely marriage.

This show is the second collaboration between Sligo County Council Arts Service, The Hawk's Well Theatre Sligo, and Mikel Murfi. It was created for the Bealtaine Festival 2015.

Originally from Sligo, Mikel Murfi trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Paris. As an actor and a director he has worked in all the major theatres in Ireland. He has won 5 fringe first awards in Edinburgh and the Irish Times award for Best Supporting actor. His film work includes The Commitments, The Butcher Boy, Intermission and Jimmy's Hall. Following sell-out runs in Dublin and at the Galway International Arts Festival, he performed in 2014 at the National Theatre London in Enda Walsh's acclaimed production of Ballyturk with Cillian Murphy and Stephen Rea. He performed in The Last Hotel - an opera by Enda Walsh in Covent Garden. He'll appear once again at Sadler's Wells in November 2017 in Michael Keegan-Dolan's sell out show from last November - the dance theatre production of Swan Lake/Loch Na hEala.

ROUND HOUSE THEATRE, WASHINGTON DC

US Première of

HANDBAGGED

By Moira Buffini

31 January - 25 February 2018

Directed by Indhu Rubasingham

Part of the 2018 Women's Voices Theater Festival

Presented by arrangement with Tricycle Theatre and Eleanor Lloyd Productions

Indhu Rubasingham's Olivier Award-winning production of Moira Buffini's Handbagged makes its US première at the Round House Theatre in Washington DC as part of the 2018 Women's Voices Theater Festival - the world's largest festival of new work by female playwrights.

The monarch - Liz.

Her most powerful subject - Maggie.

Two enduring icons born six months apart. One destined to rule, the other elected to lead. But when the stiff upper lip softened and the gloves came off, which one had the upper hand?

Handbagged is the 'wickedly funny' (Evening Standard) new play that opens the clasp on the relationship between two giants of the 20th Century.

Moira Buffini's 'irresistibly mischievous' (The Independent) comedy speculates on that most provocative of questions: What did the world's most powerful women talk about behind closed palace doors?

Moira Buffini's plays include Women, Power & Politics for the Tricycle Theatre, wonder.land, Welcome To Thebes and Dinner for the National Theatre, Dying For It (adapted from Nicolai Erdman's The Suicide) and Marianne Dreams (adapted from Catherine Storr's book) for The Almeida Theatre, A Vampire Story for NT Connections, Loveplay for the RSC, Silence for Birmingham Rep (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Gabriel for Soho Theatre (LWT Plays On Stage Award and theMeyer

Whitworth Award), Blavatsky's Tower for the Machine Room, and Jordan with Anna Reynolds for the Gate (Writers Guild Award for Best Fringe Play). For television, her work includes Harlots; and her screenplays include Viceroy's House,Tamara Drewe directed by Stephen Frears, Jane Eyre directed

by Cary Fukanaga, and Byzantium directed by Neil Jordan. She recently directed her first short film,

Father.

Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre Indhu Rubasingham directs. Her work for the company includes Red Velvet (which transferred to New York and later to the Garrick Theatre as part of the Kenneth Branagh Season) and Handbagged (winner of Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre - also West End and UK tour). Other productions for the Tricycle Theatre include The Invisible Hand, A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes, Multitudes, The House That Will Not Stand, PaperDolls, Women, Power and Politics, Stones in His Pockets, Detaining Justice, The Great Game: Afghanistan, Fabulation and Starstruck. Other theatre credits include Ugly Lies the Bone, The Motherf**cker with the Hat (Evening Standard Awardfor Best Play), The Waiting Room (National Theatre), The Ramayana (National Theatre/ Birmingham Rep), Belong, Disconnect, Free Outgoing, Lift Off, Clubland, The Crutch and Sugar Mummies (Royal Court), Ruined (Almeida), Yellowmanand Anna in the Tropics (Hampstead Theatre), Secret Rapture and The Misanthrope (Minerva, Chichester), Romeo and Juliet (Chichester Festival Theatre ), Pure Gold (Soho Theatre), The No Boys Cricket Club and Party Girls (Theatre Royal Stratford East), Wuthering Heights (Birmingham REP), Heartbreak House (Watford Palace Theatre), Sugar Dollies and Shakuntala (Gate Theatre), A River Sutra (Three Mill Island Studios), Rhinoceros (UC Davis, California) and A Doll's House(Young Vic).

Round House Theatre is one of the leading theatre companies in the Washington, D.C., area, recently called "one of the most important outposts in the region for provocative high-end drama" by The Washington Post, and a member of theprestigious League of Regional Theatres. Handbagged will be presented as a part of the 2018 Women's Voices Theater Festival (for which Round House is an Originating Theatre) the world's largest festival of new works by female playwrights.The festival was created to highlight the scope of new plays written by female playwrights and the range of professional theater being produced in and around the nation's capital.

NATIONAL THEATRE

A Tricycle Theatre and National Theatre co-production

THE GREAT WAVE

By Francis Turnly

Spring 2018

Dorfman Theatre

Directed by Indhu Rubasingham

An epic play set in Japan and North Korea. On a dark and stormy night two sisters, Hanako and Reiko, are swept away by a gigantic wave. Reiko survives while Hanako is, seemingly, lost to the sea. Their mother, however, can't shake the feeling her daughter is still alive.

The Great Wave won the Catherine Johnson Award (2016), and renews Turnly's collaboration with the Tricycle Theatre - in 2014 he was awarded the Channel 4 Playwright in Residence, joining the Tricycle Theatre for a residency throughout2015.

Francis Turnly's plays include Hiding for Watford Palace Theatre, Bogland for The Lyric Theatre, Belfast and Harajuku Girls for Finborough Theatre. He has written several plays for Radio 4 including the original detective drama, Hinterland.

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE

AN EVENING WITH AN IMMIGRANT

Presented by Inua Ellams and Fuel

Written and performed by Inua Ellams

Summer 2017

Award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams returns to the Tricycle with An Evening with an

Immigrant.

Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in what is now considered by many to be Boko Haram territory, in 1996, Ellams left Nigeria for England aged 12, moved to Ireland for 3 years before returning to London and starting work as awriter and graphic designer.

Part of this story was documented in his hilarious autobiographical Edinburgh Fringe First award winning play, The 14th Tale, but most of it is untold. Littered with poems, stories and anecdotes, Inua will tell his ridiculous, fantastic, poignantimmigrant-story of escaping fundamentalist Islam, directing an arts festival at his college in Dublin, performing solo shows at the National Theatre, and drinking wine with the Queen of England, all the while without a country to belong to or placeto call home.

Age recommendation: 15+

TRICYCLE CINEMA SPACE

UPFRONT COMEDY CELEBRATES ITS 25 BIRTHDAY WITH A NEW SEASON AT THE TRICYCLE

The Upfront Comedy season continues with:

Sunday 2 April, 7.30pm

John Simmit, Wil-E, Mr Cee and Thanyia Moore

Upfront founder John Simmit introduces an international line up headlined by Washington's Wil-E, and featuring circuit everyman Mr Cee and spiky, sassy south Londoner Thanyia Moore.

Sunday 7 May, 7.30pm

Kane Brown, Rudi Lickwood, Kayleigh Lewis and Glazz Campbell

Comedy's alpha male Kane Brown introduces Harlesden's own Rudi Lickwood, award-winning new girl Kayleigh Lewis and Sheffield's affable ex-boxer Glazz Campbell

Age recommendation: 16+

ABOUT THE Tricycle Theatre

The Tricycle presents the world through a variety of different lenses, projecting unheard voices into the mainstream. We create high-quality, engaging and innovative work. Located in Brent, the most diverse borough in London, the Tricycle is alocal venue with an international presence.

Recent Tricycle productions include the UK Premiere of The Invisible Hand by the Pulitzer Winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, The Mother and The Father (West End/ UK Tour) by Molière Award-winning playwright Florian Zeller, A Wolf In Snakeskin Shoes and The House That Will Not Stand by Marcus Gardley, Multitudes by John Hollingworth, the Olivier Award-winning Handbagged by Moira Buffini (West End/UK Tour), Paper Dolls by Philip Himberg and Red Velvet by LolitaChakrabarti (West End/ New York, winner of two Critics' Circle Awards and an Evening Standard Award).

The Tricycle has recently collaborated with Sundance Theatre Lab, Complicite, Frantic Assembly, Birmingham Rep, Tiata Fahodzi, Paines Plough, Liverpool Everyman, Eclipse Theatre, Theatre Royal Bath, Why Not Theatre and Plymouth Theatre Royal, amongst others.

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