THE BIT-PLAYERS Comes to Southwark Playhouse in September

A group of actors - the Bit-Players of the title - decide it's time they got the recognition they've always deserved, and the roles they were born to play. But in taking radical action to realise their dreams, they might just discover that there are no small parts, only small actors...

The Bit-Players is a comedy of errors and a political call to arms that resonates with a twenty-first century world in perpetual upheaval and in search of a collective identity.

Performed in English for the first time, this is a unique opportunity to see this absurdist comic masterpiece by one of Spain's most celebrated contemporary playwrights.

Cast: Kian Ali, Tiggy Bayley, Ida Ciecholewska, Rosie Dawson, Iskra Everhys,, Renee Gerald, Lawrence Hartley, Fern Jessop, Teigan Macphee, Alex Montagu, Oni Ngonadi, Mya Onwugbonu, Inbal Port, Victoria Relph, Sneha Sen and Will Sharp.

The Press on Southwark Playhouse Young Company

José Sanchis Sinisterra is a Spanish playwright, director and theatre practitioner, born in Valencia in 1940. He was Professor at the Barcelona Theater Institute, from 1971 to 2010. In 1977 he founded El Teatro Fronterizo in Barcelona, which he led until 1997, and in 2010, he founded the Nuevo Teatro Fronterizo Association in Madrid.

He is the author of more than fifty plays including originals, adaptations and dramaturgies, many premiered by El Teatro Fronterizo and subsequently performed across Europe and Latin America.

As a writer he has adapted Sophocles (Oedipus the King and Electra), Shakespeare (The Winter's Tale and Richard III) and Chekhov (Three Sisters), and has translated the work of Anouilh, Cocteau and Beckett amongst many others.

As a theater director, he has staged works by Cervantes, Lope De Vega, Molière, Racine, Shakespeare, Pirandello, Chekov, Strindberg, O'Neill, Saroyan, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Anouilh, Brecht and Beckett, Mayorga, as well as many of his own works.

Amongst the awards he has won include a National Theater Award (1990), a Lorca Award (1991), the Lifetime Achievement Award at the XXIII International Hispanic Theater Festival of Miami (2008) and the Award for a Whole Career from the Spanish Federation of University Theater (2016).

William Gregory is a translator from Spanish, specialising in contemporary theatre from Spain and Latin America. Productions of his translations include B by Guillermo Calderón (Royal Court, London; Washington Ensemble, Seattle); Villa by Guillermo Calderón (Royal Court; Play Company, New York); Cuzco by Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez (Theatre503, London), Chamaco by Abel González Melo (Home, Manchester), and The Concert by Ulises Rodríguez Febles (Royal Court; BBC). His translation of the world premiere A Fight Against... by Pablo Manzi opened at the Royal Court in December 2021.

In 2020, his translation of The Uncapturable, a memoir by leading Argentine theatre-maker Rubén Szuchmacher, was published by Methuen Drama. He was joint Translator in Residence at the British Centre of Literary Translation for 2020/21 and was a finalist in the 2019 Valle-Inclán award for literary translation from Spanish for The Oberone Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Plays. He also a visiting research associate at King's College London and a member of the Out of the Wings theatre collective, platforming theatre in English translation from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds.

Pepa Duarte is a Peruvian actor, writer and theatre maker based in London. She is a RADA graduate as well as a trained physical performer and improviser. Her one-woman show Eating Myself has recently appeared at the King's Head and the Peckham Fringe, and she has performed with the Royal Court, Punch Drunk, Bric a Brac, Head for Heights, Global Voices and La Fura Dels Baus. She is also a drama facilitator for the Old Vic Theatre and Tender.

Sergio Maggiolo is a performer, director and playwright in the UK, the US and Latin America. He has created shows for Battersea Arts Centre, Rich Mix, the Arcola, Oval House the Actors Centre and the Cervantes Theatre and collaborated with companies such as Ice and Fire, the Neo-Futurists, Say it Again... Sorry?, Degenerate Fox and Out of the Wings.

Southwark Playhouse Young Company is Southwark Playhouse's flagship Participation programme for young people aged 11 - 25. Open to all and led by professional theatre makers, the Company takes part in weekly workshops and regular performances. Recent collaborations include with The National Theatre and Tate Modern, whilst former participants have gone on to become award winning performers and writers at the BBC, The National Theatre and in the West End.

Performances run Thursday 1st - Saturday 3rd September 2022.

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