Crowded Room Presents THE LISTENING ROOM at Gerry's Studio Space at Theatre Royal Stratford East

Crowded Room return with the sold out, critically acclaimed verbatim play The Listening Room. The play has transferred from The Old Red Lion, to Theatre Royal Stratford East for a three-week run from 14 to 30 September. Written by Harriet Madeley (Crowded Room) and directed by Max Barton (PIGDOG), the piece is sculpted from extraordinary real-life interviews recorded with victims and offenders of violent crimes, each of whom took part in an elective restorative justice process.

The play uses recorded delivery, with the voices of victims and offenders fed via headphones, into the actors ears. The actors are cast by the random by the audience each night, never knowing what character they are going to get.

Cast: Cathy Tyson, Mark Knightley, Neran Persuad, Ryan Gerald and Harriet Madeley. Set design by Georgia de Grey and sound design by Jethro Cooke.

The contribution of the victims and offenders whose words and voices are featured is integral to the project. All contributors took part in post-show discussions at The Old Red Lion. The writer, Harriet Madeley, undertook two years' worth of initial research and, since the first run of the show, has revisited the contributors to further enrich and develop the show.

In the lead up to the performance run, the company are delivering workshops with young offenders in Hackney in collaboration with Young Hackney.

Crowded Room are also producing a 15-minute extract of the show at City Hall for Sadiq Khan and Cressida Dick at the Mayor of London's Victims Event.

They are also working with the Prison Radio Association to produce a broadcast of the play to 70,000 inmates in UK prisons.

Crowded Room is run by Harriet Madeley and Mark Knightley. They create socially engaged work to galvanise young people and engage non-traditional theatre-goers. Their previous production, The Heart of Adrian Lovett at Theatre Delicatessen, was supported by Arts Council England and sold out its final week, garnering excellent reviews including 5* from The Stage: "If there's one show you see before the election, make sure it's this."

The Listening Room is funded by Arts Council England. The John Thaw Foundation is funding our outreach work around the show and The Austin Hope, Pilkington Trust is funding our prison radio broadcast.

Tickets for The Listening Room are on sale: call 020 8534 0310 or book online at http://www.stratfordeast.com/.

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