Peter Brathwaite and Katie Bray to Star in Gate Theatre and English National Opera's EFFIGIES OF WICKEDNESS

Artistic Director Ellen McDougall today announced performers for the Gate Theatre's groundbreaking collaboration with English National Opera opening in May next year. Concluding her inaugural season, Effigies of Wickedness is a cabaret show featuring a huge range of shockingly prophetic, satirical songs exactly 80 years after they were banned by the Nazis. McDougall directs Peter Brathwaite and Katie Bray and the production goes on sale on Thursday 21 September. Effigies of Wickedness opens on 14 May, with previews from 3 May and runs until 2 June.

Welcome to the cabaret of degenerate music!

Where you can be just who you want to be!

In a groundbreaking collaboration between the Gate Theatre and ENO, we are thrilled to present a cabaret of riotous, witty, and shockingly prophetic songs, banned by the Nazis in the 1930s.

As the Nazis identified difference as something to be afraid of, the Weimar cabaret scene danced on with songs that celebrated it. With artists from Brecht and Weill to Schoenberg, this subversive underground scene was bursting at the seams with brilliant, visionary voices.

No surprise then, that they were censored, exiled, and incarcerated shortly after as 'degenerates'. And their songs have been all but lost since. Until now.

Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre, Ellen McDougall said of the announcement "I am so thrilled to be collaborating with Daniel Kramer and ENO on Effigies of Wickedness (Songs banned by the Nazis). Daniel is himself an alumnus of the Gate, having directed groundbreaking productions of Hair and Woyzeck. We are developing a cabaret-style show with songs from the Weimar Republic's subversive underground scene, with a live band. The songs are shockingly prophetic, covering topics including abortion rights for women, gender fluidity, and how our obsession with oil might cost us the world.

"I'm delighted to be working with Katie and Peter, both exceptional artists with a real passion for both the music and politics of this moment.

"Working with ENO provides another opportunity in this first season for us at the Gate to imagine what else theatre can be, to reinvent our space, and to make a piece of work that passionately champions diversity, difference and freedom of expression."

Peter Brathwaite's previous opera credits include Madama Butterfly, La Boheme (Nederlandse Reisopera), L'Assedio Di Calais, Xerxes, La Calisto (English Touring Opera), La Fanciulla Del West (Opera Holland Park) Captain Blood's Revenge (Glyndebourne) and The Drummer Boy of Waterloo (Jubilee Opera at Aldeburgh). Brathwaite is the recipient of a 2016/17 International Opera Awards Bursary and the 2016 English Touring Opera Chris Ball Bursary. Other prizes include a Peter Moores Foundation Major Award and an Independent Opera Fellowship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Churchill Fellow, and an alumnus of the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme.

Katie Bray's credits for opera include Hansel and Gretel, IL Barbiere di Siviglia and Albert Herring (Opera North), Akhnaten, The Way Back Home (English National Opera), La Scala di seta (Scottish Opera) L'Italiana in Algeri, Il turco in Italia (Garsington Opera), Lakmé (Opera Holland Park) and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, La Calisto (English Touring Opera). She also appears regularly in the LonDon English Song Festival, where she directed concerts at Wilton's Music Hall, as well as at the Oxford Lieder Festival for which she recently recorded a disc of Schumann songs with Sholto Kynoch.

Ellen McDougall is Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre. Previous credits for the Gate Theatre include The Unknown Island (2017) and Idomeneus (2014). Her credits include a critically acclaimed production of Othello at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe earlier this year, the Lyric Hammersmith's annual pantomime - Aladdin by Joel Horwood (2016) and Cinderella by Tom Wells (2015), The Rolling Stone (Orange Tree Theatre and Manchester Royal Exchange), The Remains of Maisie Duggan (Abbey Theatre, Dublin), The Glass Menagerie (Headlong), Anna Karenina (Manchester Royal Exchange), Henry the Fifth, Not Now Bernard, TheNutcracker, Antigone and Philoctetes (Unicorn Theatre), Glitterland (Secret Theatre/Lyric Hammersmith) and Ivan and the Dogs (Actors Touring Company/Soho Theatre - nominated for an Olivier Award). McDougall was formerly part of the Secret Theatre Company at the Lyric Hammersmith, Associate Director at the Gate, and an Associate Artist at ATC. She trained as an assistant to Katie Mitchell and Marianne Elliott. She was awarded an International Artists' Development Award (ACE/British Council) in 2012.

English National Opera is founded on the belief that opera of the highest quality should be accessible to everyone. ENO is a national company of international standard, forging groundbreaking collaborations across art forms, with world-class productions that inspire, surprise, and captivate. ENO's work is made accessible by offering a large proportion of tickets at affordable prices, and by distributing it widely on screen and via digital media. ENO nurtures talent across its entire company, whether on-stage, backstage, or in the pit, and provides a platform for young singers to develop global careers. ENO's autumn and spring seasons of opera productions at their home, the London Coliseum, are supported by a summer season of outside work. During the summer months, the company collaborates with other artistic organisations and venues around London, working in partnership to bring their work to new and wider audiences and presenting opportunities to develop artists, present opera in fresh and interesting ways and work with venues which may not regularly produce opera.

For more information visit www.gatetheatre.co.uk.

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