BROKEN WATER by Michèle Winstanley Monday 20th January at 7pm Living on the same London street three ordinary women with three different perspectives tell a similar story. Between the ‘rock’ of having children and the ‘hard place’ of not having them, lies a kind of love that can make you lose your bearings. Like water, children are fluid, burdensome, delicious, impossible to hold on to, and difficult to be without.Using three interwoven talking heads, BROKEN WATER is a moving story about life, love and loss. Michèle Winstanley is a former actor, turned playwright. In 1999 her first play, KEEPERS, was selected by Hampstead Theatre for inclusion in their festival of play readings by new writers, called A Small Drop of Ink. This led to a full production there in 2000, and a commission from Soho Theatre for her second play, EDGING GENTLY FORWARDS (via dramaturg and writer Paul Sirett). Michèle also has experience of assistant-directing; she helped Ken McClymont, former Artistic Director of the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington, on two of his productions there in the late 1990s. Over the past few years Michèle has been re-training as a sign language interpreter. This new work has enabled her to continue writing. BROKEN WATER is Michèle's third play.
Director Cast
Phil Davis Sheila Reid Pippa Hayward Aimee-Ffion Edwards Jim Fish
BEVAN’S BABY by Rosie Dastgir Monday 20th January at 9pm What if Nye Bevan, the architect of the National Health Service, were to come back from the grave and inspect the institution he founded? Would he be horrified, or sanguine? Set in a London hospital, the play offers a surreal, black comic glimpse at the modern day NHS in a theatrical context, pitting its historic aspiration against a selection of contemporary stories. These stories are based on individuals’ testimonies, gleaned or recorded, through interview, documentary research, anecdote or casual conversation. The play offers an antidote to the world of medical soap opera, and the unmediated world of reality TV. Rosie Dastgir was born and brought up in Bedford, England, to a Pakistani father and an English mother, and educated at Oxford and New York universities. In 2005, she moved from east London to Brooklyn, New York for seven years, where she wrote her first novel, A Small Fortune, (Quercus UK, Penguin USA). Her work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella Magazine, Prospect.com. Rosie has spoken on panels at several festivals, including the London South Asian Literature Festival, the WriteIdea Festival, and Open Davos, in Switzerland. Her first radio play, Love at Last Sight, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in February. She lives in London Fields. Arcola Theatre Production Company. Company Number: 5242988. Charity Number: 1108613