Emma Dennis-Edwards, Wil Coban, and More to Star in New British Play GATE

Emma Dennis-Edwards (Eve), Wil Coban (Mark), Eleanor Henderson (Rebecca), Joe McArdle (Luke) and Katie Sherrard (Esther) will star in the premiere of Artemis FitzAlan Howard's play GATE at the Cockpit Theatre in London. The production will have a limited season from 13 to 24 September, with a press night on Friday 15 September 2017. GATE will be directed by Sadie Spencer, who has just directed the highly acclaimed premiere of Joe Hampson's Rabbits at Park Theatre. GATE is presented at the Cockpit by Deadpan Theatre, whose production of Pre-drinks/Afterparty received critical and public acclaim at last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Artemis FitzAlan Howard is co-founder, with Eliot Salt, of Deadpan Theatre. Their two-part musical Pre-drinks/Afterparty, written by Eliot and Jude Mack, is currently in development with Avalon Television. Eliot and Jude's latest play, Third Wheel, is currently running, with four-star reviews, at the Gilded Balloon at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe until 27 August.

Emma Dennis-Edwards's previous stage work includes After Orlando (The Finborough), Upper Cut(Southwark Playhouse), Clean (The Traverse Theatre and 59E59 Theaters, New York), A New World Order (Shoreditch Town Hall, Barbican and Hydrocracker Theatre) and Millennium (Vineyard Theatre, New York). Wil Coban appeared in this year's film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which starred Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law, and theatre includes Romeo and Juliet at HOME Manchester, for which he was nominated for the Manchester Theatre Best Newcomer Award. Eleanor Henderson's theatre credits include Fagin's Last Night Alive (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Waiting for Alice (The King's Head/Waterloo East/Edinburgh Festival) and Pass It On (Lyric Hammersmith). Joe McArdle is an actor, writer and stand-up comedian and has won awards for both acting and stand-up (DarkChat & Edinburgh Revue). Most recently, he appeared in Twitchers, co-written with Steve Duffy and Craig Methven, at Camden Fringe with the company Back of the Attic. Katie Sherrard has written and performed her own work, including her one-woman comedy Cautionary Kate at King's Head Theatre, following a full run at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe 2016. She is a founding member of multi-award-winning theatre company, Bucket Club. With Bucket Club, she has performed at venues including Battersea Arts Centre, The Curve and Bristol Old Vic.

GATE is a poignant and witty story of love and loss that asks what really happens to us after we die, what we leave behind and what we will become. GATE is written by The production will have a limited run at the Cockpit Theatre in London from 13 to 24 September, with a press night on Friday 15 September 2017.

It is an average Thursday morning at 'The Gate' in Wapping, East London, and, like every first-born child in her family for generations, Eve is guarding it carefully. It's going to be a busy day - there are four new appointments booked in. The trouble is none of the clients knew they were coming... because nobody knows the gate exists until they reach it, and to reach the gate you have to be dead.

"I mean... I sort of hoped the pearly gates story was true-ish where I could finally have curly hair and be into fitness and classical music and eat Philadelphia toast in the clouds with my other angel pals. But now I'm here and this is - I'm questioning everything I ever believed in."

In GATE, FitzAlan Howard challenges the theories of the great 'thinkers': when evolutionists tell us that we're just trying to spread our genes, economists tell us that all we do is maximize our self-interest, and psychologists tell us that we just want to get laid, is it true that we only act on narrow material desires or do our wider spiritual beliefs still count for something?

GATE will be directed by Sadie Spencer and designed by Alex Berry. It is produced at the Cockpit Theatre by Artemis FitzAlan Howard for Deadpan Theatre.

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