Stella

A contemporary new version of Goethe’s“play for lovers”

Southwark Playhouse Tue 23rd to Sat 27th March at 7.30pm with a 3pm matinee on Sat, 27th March 2010.

Leo and his dad blow into town looking for a lucky new start. As whisky and music flow freely, chance encounters with kindred spirits reveal secrets too close for comfort. Will this be the last stop on their journey or will they flee as fast as they can?

Stella mixes contemporary true stories gathered in the UK and the US with Goethe’s scandalous original to bring you a show infused with live music and dance, about a passionate quest for love:  losing it, finding it, and what people will do to hold on. Real life stories of love, family and reckless adventure have been gathered over the past few months through Firehouse’s public art installation, StoryStation, and have been used again in a devising process to blend them with the original play’s scenarios.

Stella rehearsed and previewed in the USA and has come back to the UK for a weeks run at the end of this month.  We are taking bookings for a UK tour in Autumn 2010.  If you are interested in booking the production please email us at firehousecreativeproductions@gmail.com.  To contribute to the creative process, go to Stella Open Source, and make your own creative suggestions–we’ll work with them in our devising process.

Directed by Rachel Parish

Designed by Will Holt

Co-produced by Cristina Catalina and Peter Stickney

Costumes: Jemima Carter-Lewis

Choreography: Pilar Wilder

Created by the Company

Tickets:
Early bird – £8
Standard – £13
Late booker – £18
BOOK EARLY TO GET THE BEST DEAL!

Go to:
http://www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/whatson_detail.php?record_number=173

or call the Booking Line on: 020 7407 0234
(Mon – Fri, 10.30am – 6.30pm)

Southwark Playhouse
Shipwright Yard
(Corner of Tooley St. & Bermondsey St.)
London
SE1 2TF

Cast: Elizabeth Boag, Alan Cox, Durassie Kiangagnu, and Richard Maxted.  With over thirty years working professionally and internationally at theatres from the fringe to the West End and Broadway, and in feature films and television, our multi-award winning cast is a dynamic and multi-talented ensemble who will bring Stella to life with passion and enthusiasm, through storytelling, music and dance.

Elizabeth Boag

Yorkshire born, bred and educated, Liz eventually migrated south to study at Mountview Academy. She was later selected to perform in the inaugural Old Vic New Voices 24 Hour Plays working with Writer, Mike Bartlett and Director, James Grieve. Recent career highlights include: TV: Stephen Poliakoff’s, Joe’s Palace, BBC 1; Stuart: A Life Backwards, Neal Street Productions, BBC 2.  Theatre: Present: Tense for Nabokov, Trafalgar Studios; The Apathists, Theatre 503; Shortcuts, The Arcola; 20th Century Which Art In Heaven, Soho Theatre; Las Meninas, The National Gallery; Kiddy-Fiddler on the Roof, Edinburgh Fringe. Film: Mission London (due for theatrical release later this year) Dimitar Mitovski; The Jam, Angelo Abela; Cross-Eyed Waltz, Peter Hearn; Jack Malchance I & II (selected by filmaka.com), Dean Loxton. Liz recently travelled to Beirut with a team of theatre practitioners lead by David Morrissey, in association with UNRWA, to deliver a series of drama workshops to Palestinian refugee children. Liz is also a founder member of Dog Ate Cake, a theatre company dedicated to resurrecting lost farce and discovering new comedy: www.dogatecake.co.uk

ALAN COX
Before attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Alan worked extensively as a child actor, most memorably in A Voyage Around My Father with Sir Laurence Olivier and as Young Watson in Young Sherlock Holmes.  Recently, he played David Frost in the US National tour of Frost/Nixon for which he received a Helen Hayes Award nomination. He is  a regular improviser with Ken Campbell’s School of Night and participates in Improvathons hosted by The Sticking Place.

He made his Broadway debut in the Tony-nominated production of Translations by Brian Friel for the Manhattan Theatre Club and also appeared in Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago. He made his London West End debut in Strange Interlude (Duke of York’s) and more recently appeared there in The Creeper (Playhouse) and The Importance of Being Earnest (Theatre Royal Haymarket).

Durassie Kiangagnu is of South African Parentage but grew up in Stockholm, and has for the past 4 years has been residing in London where he completed a three year full time acting course at The Academy of Science of Acting and Directing (ASAD). Since graduating in September 2008 he’s been involved in various theatre productions, focusing on Physical Theatre performing on the fringe and touring theatre nationally and internationally around Europe. Recent theatre credits include Playing Jimi Hendrix and Cinesias in Lysistrata. Durassie has also played leading roles in short films, music videos and television.

Richard Maxted

Training: The Central School of Speech and Drama (graduated 2008)

Theatre: Old Vic 24 Hour Plays (Old Vic), The Final Episode (RADA), Three is Company, His Face, Her Face, and Dare Me To The Desert (Kings Head), Me and My Girl (Palladium), Sweeney Todd (Shawford Mill), Theatre in a Car (London Bridge Festival).  His screen credits include a short film Solstice Songfor Passion Pictures directed by Tim Hope.  Credits whilst training: Algernon (The Importance of Being Ernest), Laertes (Hamlet), Claudio (Much Ado About Nothing), and Robert (Company). He also performed in Confusions by Alan Ayckbourn and The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman.

Collaboration

During our residence, the London-based cast will collaborate with musicians, visual artists, dancers and writers based in Macon Georgia. During the four weeks of residence in Georgia, we will meet with local artists, improvising a short cross-arts performance piece.  We will share this collaboration on a public performance at the Crossroads festival.  We will also invite groups of young people in GA into our rehearsal room to watch the performance making process.  We have arranged for partner youth theatres in the UK to watch rehearsals via skype, and to set up a facebook page for the young people in the US and the UK to connect over the shared experience of this creative process.