Cast and Creatives Announced For World Premiere of HERE at Southwark Playhouse

Papatango has announced the full cast and creative team for the world première of Clive Judd's Here, the winner of the 2022 Papatango New Writing Prize. Directed by Papatango's Artistic Director George Turvey, the production opens on 15 November 2022 at The Large at Southwark Playhouse, with previews from 11 November, and runs until 3 December 2022.

Set in the West Midlands, Here is a tender, funny and utterly truthful story about family and feeling, performed by Lucy Benjamin (Monica), Mark Frost (Jeff), Sam Baker-Jones (Matt) and Hannah Millward (Jess). The ensemble of actors all have strong connections to the West Midlands.

Completing the creative team are Jasmine Swan (Set and Costume Designer), Bethany Gupwell (Lighting Designer) and Asaf Zohar (Composer and Sound Designer).

Clive Judd's debut play won the 2022 Papatango Prize from a record 1,553 scripts - more submissions, by annual average, than any other UK playwriting award. Heralding a remarkable new talent, this year's Prize production will run on Papatango's biggest ever stage - The Large at Southwark Playhouse - offering main house billing for a debut playwright. It follows previous Papatango Prize discoveries who have gone on to win Olivier, Critics' Circle and OffWestEnd Awards and première worldwide.

A family packs into a small house with a tangled history. Matt is here, yearning to reach someone he's lost. His cousin Jess is here, too; she just wants to feel something. Anything. And Aunt Monica and Jeff are still here, just about. Together, ferocious and funny, they laugh, they scrap, they remember.

Tonight these four people, inextricably bound yet so far apart, will finally confront the old decisions that haunt them. How does a family make a future, when everything that holds it together lies in the past?

Lucy Benjamin plays Monica. Lucy is perhaps best known as Lucy Fowler in EastEnders, for which she received a National Television Award nomination for Most Popular Actress. She also won the Royal Television Society Midlands Award for Acting Performance for her portrayal of Jan Fisher in Doctors. Other television credits include: The Detectorists, Casualty, The Dumping Ground, New Tricks, Holby City, Missing, Kingdom, Dangerfield, The Afternoon Play, Staying Alive, Class Act, Murder Most Horrid, The Bill, Jupiter Moon, Press Gang, Close to Home, Bottom, Up The Elephant and Round The Castle, Me and My Girl, Beau Geste, Doctor Who, Dramarama and Stig Of The Dump. Film credits include: Eleven and Not Alone. Theatre credits include: Henry VI Parts ll & lll (RSC); Love Letters, In Basildon and Deadly Murder (Queen's Theatre Hornchurch); Hairspray and Framed (national tours); Peter Pan (The Mayflower); The Play What I Wrote and The Pocket Dream (York Theatre Royal); Spiders Web and Meet Me at Mimi's (Mercury Theatre, Colchester); Worzel Gummidge (Birmingham Rep & Cambridge Theatre); Annie (Adelphi Theatre) and Barnardo (Royalty Theatre).

Mark Frost plays Jeff. Theatre credits include extensive work in Steven Berkoff's devising company and in his various productions of Oedipus (including at Liverpool Playhouse/Nottingham Playhouse) and Bible Stories (New End, Hampstead). Other theatre work includes Batman Live (global tour); A Christmas Carol (Sherman Theatre); A Man For All Seasons (York Theatre Royal); The Breadwinner, Once Bitten, Chains, Major Barbara and The Madras House (Orange Tree Theatre); Dealer's Choice, Elegy For A Lady and The Yalta Game (Salisbury Playhouse) and Bonded (Birmingham Rep). Television credits include: Unforgotten; Silent Witness; Django; Sherwood; The Larkins; Hetty Feather; The Last Czars; Poldark; Stella; New Blood; Rocket's Island; The Mill; Doctors; The Bill; Brookside; Hope Springs; Law & Order UK; Jonathan Creek; Casualty; Midsomer Murders; Holby City; To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters; Single; Terri McIntyre; The Stretford Wives; Call Red; Midnight Movie andThe Mystery of Men. Film credits include: Mayhem; Prey; The Last Trace; A Hundred Streets; Stoned; Hello You; Faust and Blue Juice. Short film credits include: Wake and Where There's Smoke.

Sam Baker-Jones plays Matt. Here will be his professional stage debut. Television credits include: The Walk-In; DI Ray; Make Me Famous; Noughts and Crosses; Before I Die and Doctors. Film credits include: Passing Through.

Hannah Millward plays Jess. Her theatre credits include: Peter Pan Reimagined and Rebel Music (Birmingham Rep) and This Beautiful Future (Yard Theatre). Television credits include: Bliss and Broadchurch.

Clive Judd is a writer, director and bookseller originally from Dines Green in Worcester, who now lives in Birmingham. He was educated at the University of Manchester and subsequently trained as a director on the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme, the inaugural Foundry Programme at the Birmingham Rep, and The National Theatre Studio Director's Course. Here is Judd's first play. His story There Has Been a Delay is currently being adapted for audio, and We Can Collect The Keys, a collaboration with the artist Patrick Wray, was published by Exit Press in 2022. As a director, his credits include The MP, Aunty Mandy and Me (Leicester Curve), Captain Amazing (Live Theatre), Rails (Theatre by the Lake), This Will End Badly and Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (Southwark Playhouse), and Dyl and Sparks (Old Red Lion Theatre).

George Turvey directs. He co-founded Papatango in 2007 and became its sole Artistic Director in January 2013. In 2022 he won the Genesis Foundation Prize and was named in The Stage 25. As a dramaturg, he has led the development of all Papatango's productions, including the Olivier Award-winning Old Bridge. Direction for Papatango includes: The Silence and the Noise (UK tour); Shook (Southwark Playhouse/UK tour, nominated for 7 OffWestEnd Awards including Best Director and Best Production; also broadcast on Sky Arts); Hanna (Arcola Theatre/UK tour) and After Independence, winner of the Alfred Fagon Audience Award (Arcola Theatre/BBC Radio 4). George is the co-author of Being A Playwright: A Career Guide For Writers.

Set & Costume Designer Jasmine Swan trained at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, where she received the Ede & Ravenscroft Prize for Creative and Technical Excellence (2016). Jasmine was multiple nominated for Best Designer in The Stage Debut Awards 2018, for her designs at Theatre503, Finborough Theatre, Arcola Theatre and Brighton Rialto. Her set design for Chutney (Bunker Theatre) was nominated for an OffWestEnd Award (2018) and featured on the SBTD Staging Places online exhibition for Prague Quadrennial 2018/19. She was a finalist in the Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2017, working with Phoenix Dance Theatre at West Yorkshire Playhouse. Credits include: The Narcissist (Chichester Festival Theatre); House of Flamenka (Peacock Theatre); The House with Chicken Legs (HOME Manchester); Eden and The Forest (Hampstead Theatre); The Jungle Book (Watermill Theatre); Lava (Bush Theatre); We Are As Gods (Battersea Arts Centre); The Wedding Singer (Royal Academy of Music); Lady Chatterley's Lover (Shaftesbury Theatre) and Animal Farm (Royal & Derngate Theatres).

Lighting Designer Bethany Gupwell won the Association of Lighting Designer's Francis Reid Award in 2018. Credits include: Ignition - Frantic Assembly (Brixton House); A-typical Rainbow (Turbine Theatre); The Pirate, the Princess and the Platypus (Polka Theatre); Wolf Club and Little Scratch (Hampstead Theatre); We Started To Sing (Arcola Theatre); The Woods (Southwark Playhouse); Rice and Little Baby Jesus (Orange Tree Theatre); Albatross (Jacksons Lane); When Darkness Falls (Park Theatre/UK tour); Brown Girls Do It Too, Fitter, and Wonder Winterland (Soho Theatre); Heads (Watford Palace) and Dracula (Leicester Curve).

Asaf Zohar's credits include: Sorry, You're Not A Winner (Bristol Old Vic/Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Bit-Players and Romeo and Juliet (Southwark Playhouse); Sessions and Whitewash (Soho Theatre); The Silence and the Noise (Papatango/UK tour) and Peter Pan Reimagined (Birmingham Repertory Theatre). Television credits include: Reggie Yates: Extreme Russia; Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA; Reggie Yates: Extreme UK; Reggie Yates: Extreme South Africa and Dispatches: Taliban Child Fighters. His film work has been shown at Cannes, BAFTA, Edinburgh and Encounters festivals.

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