Adelaide Festival's Neil Armfield AO to Direct David Hare's I'M NOT RUNNING at London's National Theatre

Acclaimed theatre director and Adelaide Festival Joint-Artistic Director, Neil Armfield, will direct the premiere of renowned English playwright David Hare's latest work I'm Not Running at the prestigious National Theatre in London next year.

The collaboration presents an exciting opportunity for Armfield to further expand his extensive international career as a director, with I'm Not Running announced as the first play that he will premiere at the National Theatre.

Armfield continues to direct selected work alongside his commitment as Joint-Artistic Director of Adelaide Festival alongside Rachel Healy. Fortuitously, it was while finishing writing I'm Not Running that Hare saw Armfield's production of Brett Dean's critically acclaimed opera Hamlet (the centerpiece of the 2018 Adelaide Festival program) at Glyndebourne in June earlier this year. Subsequent discussions with Rufus Norris, Artistic Director of the National Theatre led to Armfield's appointment to direct the premiere at the National Theatre in late 2018.

"I was thrilled to accept. It's one of his best plays - smart, passionate, absolutely contemporary and funny. It has David Hare's great themes - politics, belief and the Labour Party of Great Britain. It asks the crucial question "What makes a good politician today?" said Mr Armfield.

The announcement comes ahead of the highly anticipated 2018 Adelaide Festival program launch on October 24, and represents another chapter in the enduring creative partnership between Hare and Armfield. The celebrated playwright and director first met during the 1982 Adelaide Festival when Hare was commissioned to write A Map of the World and Armfield was directing the premiere of PatRick White's Signal Driver. Armfield had the year before directed a production of Hare's Teeth 'n' Smiles at the Nimrod Theatre (forerunner to Belvoir) and went on to direct the Australian premieres of five of Hare's works for Belvoir from 1999 to 2012. The most recent collaboration between Hare and Armfield was on the revival of Hare's play The Judas Kiss (starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde) in London, Dublin, Toronto and New York, in 2012, 2013, and 2016

"Neil has been one of the senior figures of Australian theatre for the last 30 years and we're delighted to finally have him here directing his first NT production. He has a long and very good relationship with David Hare so it is great to see them reunited on this project." said National Theatre Director, Rufus Norris.

I'm Not Running will be Armfield's first premiere for the National Theatre although his work has been seen there previously when his acclaimed Belvoir/BLACK SWAN production of Cloudstreet played in The Olivier at the National Theatre in 2001.

David Hare & Neil Armfield'S COLLABORATIONS

TEETH 'N' SMILES (Nimrod, 1981 - GillIan Jones, Robert Menzies, Geoffrey Rush)

THE JUDAS KISS (Belvoir, 1999 - Bille Brown as Oscar Wilde - national tour including Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane)

MY ZINC BED (Belvoir 2002 - Ben Mendelsohn, Angie Milliken, Tony Martin)

STUFF HAPPENS (Belvoir 2005 - Peter Carroll, John Gaden, Wayne Blair, Leah Purcell)

GETHSEMANE (Belvoir 2009 - Paula Arundell, Claire Jones, Sarah Peirse, Emily Barclay, Dan Wyllie)

THE JUDAS KISS (Hampstead Theatre 2012 - Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde, national UK tour and Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Also Duke of York's Theatre, London, 2013; and Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto, and BAM Harvey Theatre, New York, 2016)

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