Arcola Theatre Presents The World Premiere of POSSESSION By Sasha Hails

Arcola Theatre, led by Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen and Executive Producer Leyla Nazli, has announced the world première of Sasha Hails' debut stage play, Possession, to be directed by Oscar Pearce. Completing the Arcola summer season in Studio 1, this powerful new play interweaves the stories of four mothers across continents and time, through colonial and contemporary Democratic Republic of Congo, and Victorian and present-day London.

Oscar Pearce directs - Sarah Amankwah as Kasambayi, Diany Bandza as Hope, Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Alice Young/Alice Seeley Harris, and Milo Twomey as John Dent/John Harris. The production opens on 19 June, with previews from 15 June, and runs until 15 July.

Four mother's lives interweave across continents and time...

Kasambayi, recently arrived in the UK from the Democratic Republic of Congo, starts her contractions on the number 38 bus at Clapton Ponds, and gives the final push at Victoria. She names her daughter Hope - hope for their new life, hope for their future.

Once Hope is fully grown, her path crosses with Alice, a foreign correspondent with a particular interest in cobalt - the latest blood mineral being mined in the DRC. But will their budding friendship threaten the life that Kasambayi has so carefully built for them in London?

Meanwhile Alice Seeley-Harris, a Victorian Missionary's wife in King Leopold's Congo has a horrible sense that history is repeating itself.

Possession is a tale about desire. About owning and being owned. About colonising and being colonised. And ultimately about the power of the spirit to escape oppression.

Sarah Amankwah plays Kasambayi. Theatre credits includes Henry V, Henry IV: Part I & Part II, Richard III, Globe Ensemble, Doctor Faustus, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Shakespeare's Globe), Amadeus, The Threepenny Opera, and Death & The King's Horseman (National Theatre); The Crucible (Manchester Royal Exchange), The Lion King (Lyceum Theatre, West End), and Tiata Tamba Tamba (Tiata Fahodzi). For television, her work includes Doctor Who, Black Earth Rising, Marcella and The Damnation of Darwin; and for film, she featured as Baroness Torbo in Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves.

Diany Bandza plays Hope. Theatre credits include Henry V (Donmar Warehouse), A Christmas Carol (Bridge Theatre) and Never Look Back (ETT). Screen credits include The Witcher, Intergalactic, Anansi Boys, The Diplomat and Jack Ryan.

Dorothea Myer-Bennett plays Alice Young and Alice Seeley Harris. Theatre credits include Leopoldstadt (West End),The Lottery of Love and The Philanderer (Orange Tree), Holy Sh!t (Kiln Theatre), The Winslow Boy (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare's Globe/Lincoln Centre, New York), Pericles (Shakespeare's Globe), Richard III and Uncle Vanya (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Misanthrope (Bristol Old Vic), Hay Fever (Royal Exchange Theatre), and Restoration (Headlong). For television, her work includes Juice, The Chelsea Detective, Dodger, Doc Martin, Before We Die, Around the World in 80 Days, Plastic People and Jude the Obscure/Dead Man Talking. Film credits include The Honourable Rebel, The Payback, The Orchard and Ladies.

Milo Twomey plays John Dent and John Harris. Theatre credits include Winter Solstice (Orange Tree), Twelfth Night (Sheffield Crucible), Much Ado About Nothing (Manchester Royal Exchange), Dancing At Lughnasa (Royal & Derngate), Brief Encounter (Kneehigh UK/US Tour), Lady Windermere's Fan, Blithe Spirit, The Children's Hour, She Stoops To Conquer, Harvey (Manchester Royal Exchange). For television work includes Four Lives, The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe, A Discovery of Witches, Motherfatherson, Agatha Raisin, War of the Worlds, No Offence, Informer, Safe, Marcella, Father Brown, Cuffs, Endeavour, and War and Peace. Recent film: Damsel.

Sasha Hails is currently lead writer and co-creator on CBBC's hit fifth series of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers. Recent work includes Belgravia (Carnival), Midwich Cuckoos (HBO/SKY) and lead writer of Netflix/Nutopia 6-part series The Last Tsars, Versailles for Canal +, and 5 part television adaptation of The Moonstone for BBC. Hails has written numerous episodes for BBC's flagship shows Eastenders, Holby City, Casualty and Doctors. Her Casualty episode 'Unsilenced', addressed FGM on primetime television for the first time, was BAFTA nominated and won a BBC Production Award and a Sexual Health Award. Before becoming a writer, she was an actress, acting in Francois Ozon's early films and created numerous devised shows with her company, Talking Tongues.

Oscar Pearce returns to the Arcola to direct for his fifth engagement at the venue, having performed in Jenufa by Timberlake Wertenbaker and The Divided Lang by Patrick Marmion. For his directorial debut of Will Self's Great Apes, he received a nomination for Best Director, in The Stage Debut awards. Other directorial credits include Keith? (Arcola Studio 1) and Mike Bartlett 13 (Jacksons Lane). As an actor he has been in several seasons with the RSC, the West End, Donmar Warehouse and Almeida Theatre, as well as venues across the UK and internationally on Broadway, in Paris, Rome, Madrid and Tokyo.

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