Bridge Theatre | The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY C.S. LEWIS

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK PETERSEN

SHOWING SOON AT THE BRIDGE THEATRE

GET CLOSER TO ALL THAT THE BRIDGE OFFERS BY BECOMING A MEMBER

PRIORITY MEMBERSHIP £50 PER YEAR (£35 FOR THOSE 35 AND UNDER) EARLIEST ACCESS TO TICKETS DEDICATED BOOKING LINE OFFERS FROM SELECTED PARTNERS

ADVANCE MEMBERSHIP £15 PER YEAR 24-HOUR ADVANCE BOOKING FOR ALL SHOWS

YOUNG BRIDGE FREE FOR UNDER-26S ACCESS TO AN EXCLUSIVE ALLOCATION OF £15 TICKETS FOR EVERY PERFORMANCE

FIND OUT MORE AT BRIDGETHEATRE.CO.UK/MEMBERSHIP

YOUNG BR IDGE

If you’re under 26, become a Young Bridge member free and get access to an exclusive allocation of £15 tickets for every performance. Go to our website to sign up and read the T&Cs. BRIDGE7.50 Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, Young Bridge members are able to purchase £7.50 tickets to selected shows.

As long as you’re logged in, and have filled in your date of birth, your discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Find out more and read the T&Cs on our website.

SP E CI A L E V EN T S

It’s not just about theatre at The Bridge – our regular programming is accompanied by an eclectic array of special events throughout the year. These have so far included iconic cook and food writer Nigella Lawson, legendary actor Sir Ian McKellen, award-winning podcast No Such Thing as a Fish and more. Plus we’ve had wine and gin tasting in our foyer and a feast fit for the Roman Empire hosted on the set of Julius Caesar, both in partnership with St. JOHN.

GIF T VOUCHER S

Gift vouchers for The Bridge can be purchased on our website.

F OOD & DR INK

We are delighted to be working with celebrated London restaurant St. JOHN on our foyer bar and café. Open throughout the day and evening, the Bridge Theatre foyer has WiFi, cakes and pastries, and a bar menu of small plates for lunch or a light meal before a show.

The bar features a carefully chosen list of St. JOHN wines, local beers and a few classic cocktails, served daily from noon. Interval orders can be placed in advance at the bar for drinks, Welsh rarebit and St. JOHN’s signature madeleines, freshly baked and served warm.

AC CE S S

Patrons with access requirements are eligible for concessionaryrate tickets to all our productions and events, for themselves plus a companion. For those who use a wheelchair, we have a range of spaces available. To book, please join the Access List on our website. For assisted listening and audio description, we have an innovative digital radio frequency system. Our Sennheiser radio receivers give you access to assisted listening and, at certain performances, audio description. Devices are available to be collected from the theatre cloakroom with headphones or induction neck loops. You may also use your own headphones.

We regularly programme captioned and audio-described performances. To find out more about all our facilities for those with access requirements, email access@bridgetheatre.co.uk or call 0333 320 0051.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT BRIDGETHEATRE.CO.UK

London Theatre Company presents by special arrangement with Elliott & Harper Productions and Catherine Schreiber the Leeds Playhouse production of

THE LION, TH THE WARDRO Based on the novel by C S Lewis Devised by The Companies

CAST, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER PETER PEVENSIE

Femi Akinfolarin

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER UNDERSTUDY WHITE WITCH / MRS MACREADY / MRS BEAVER

Emily Benjamin

MAUGRIM

Omari Bernard

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER UNDERSTUDY MAUGRIM

Amber Cayasso

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER UNDERSTUDY ASLAN

Sebastian Charles

ENSEMBLE UNDERSTUDY MR TUMNUS

Andro Cowperthwaite

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / FIGHT CAPTAIN

Nicky Cross

WHITE WITCH / MRS MACREADY

Laura Elphinstone

SCHRÖDINGER / HEAD CRUEL / PUPPETEER

David Emmings

SUSAN PEVENSIE

Shalisha James-Davis

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER UNDERSTUDY PETER / EDMUND

Linford Johnson

ASLAN / PROFESSOR KIRKE

Wil Johnson

HE WITCH & OBE LUCY PEVENSIE

Keziah Joseph

EDMUND PEVENSIE

John Leader

ENSEMBLE

Mitch Leow

OFFSTAGE SWING

Nathan Louis-Fernand

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER

Mei Mac

OFFSTAGE SWING UNDERSTUDY MR BEAVER

James McHugh

MR TUMNUS

Stuart Neal

MR BEAVER

Dean Nolan

ENSEMBLE

Helen Parke

MRS BEAVER

Beverly Rudd

OFFSTAGE SWING / DANCE CAPTAIN

Tinovimbanashe Sibanda

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER UNDERSTUDY LUCY

Millicent Wong

MUSICIANS

Tim Dalling, James Gow, Harry Miller, Pat Moran

OPENING Bridge Theatre, 18 November 2019.

FIRST PRODUCTION OPENED

Leeds Playhouse, 29 November 2017.

LENGTH About 2 hours 40 minutes, including a 20-minute interval.

Please see Front of House staff for accurate timings.

DIRECTOR

Sally Cookson

DESIGNER

Rae Smith

COMPOSER / MUSIC DIRECTOR

Benji Bower

WRITER IN THE ROOM

Adam Peck

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR

Dan Canham

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Bruno Poet

SOUND DESIGNER

Ian Dickinson for Autograph

PUPPETRY DIRECTOR

Craig Leo

AERIAL DIRECTOR

Gwen Hales

WIGS, SFX, HAIR & MAKE-UP

Susanna Peretz

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Sarah Fielding

REVIVAL DESIGNER

Tom Paris

ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER

Matt Daw

ASSOCIATE SOUND DESIGNER

Andrew Josephs

ASSOCIATE PUPPETRY DIRECTOR

Gareth Aled

CASTING DIRECTOR

Jill Green CDG

FIGHT DIRECTORS

Rachel Bown-Williams &

Ruth Cooper-Brown

of RC-Annie Ltd

COSTUME SUPERVISOR

Johanna Coe

PROPS SUPERVISOR

Lily Mollgaard

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Kate West

The original Leeds Playhouse Company Gareth Aled, Patricia Allison, Benji Bower, Will Bower, Peter Caulfield, Tim Dalling, Alan Francis, Marie Hamilton, Ruth Hammond, Michael Jean-Marain, Iain Johnstone, Cora Kirk, John Leader, Sofie Lybäck, Ira Mandela Siobhan, Carla Mendonça, Helen Parke, Anwar Russell, Lucy Tuck, Amalia Vitale and Tom Wainwright With thanks to the research and development cast Saikat Ahmed, Hayley Carmichael, David Emmings, John Leader, Joshua McCort, Charlotte Mills, Amaka Okafor, Tristan Sturrock, Lucy Tuck and Amalia Vitale

London Theatre Company board John Booth (Chair), Sir Lloyd Dorfman, Guy Weston, Tony Yeung, Nicholas Hytner, Nick Starr

FOR THE PRODUCTION

Rigger Josh Reeves Set constructed and painted by All Scene All Props Lift fabricated by Weld Fab Stage Engineering Automation by Absolute Motion Control Aerial rigging designed and supplied by John Maddox for Suspended Illusions Ltd Casting Associate Amy Beadel Rehearsal Photographer Manuel Harlan Production Photographer Brinkhoff/Mรถgenburg Poster artwork by Bob King Creative Based on artwork by AKA Original lion image by Wahyu Romdhoni Digital marketing agency Sine Digital

Special thanks to Ania Autograph Sound Recording Charlie Baptist Gemma Brown Sarah Burton Robert Butler Gandolfi Dance Alexandra Groover Martelle Hunt PrintFab Rigging Services Ella Risbridger Megan Saunders Megan Sayers Sparks Theatrical Hire Molly Stallard Sally Stone Ella Strauss Julie Summers Dave Whitehouse at Robe UK

FOR ELLIOTT & HARPER PRODUCTIONS Artistic Director Marianne Elliott Producer Chris Harper Producer Nick Sidi Head of Marketing Karl Westworth Associate Head of Production Igor Assistant to the Directors Georgia Miles Business Affairs Bob Eady Finance Consultant Lucy Woollatt Accountant Vince Dalaimo

THE FIRST MORNING Robert Butler

I

t was the first morning of rehearsals for The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe and 40 actors, stage managers and musicians were sitting in a circle in the foyer of the Bridge Theatre. Everyone introduced themselves – ‘puppeteer’, ‘ensemble’, ‘understudying Aslan’, ‘White Witch’, ‘Lucy’ – and then those who had brought copies of the book were asked to place them on the floor in the centre of the circle. The pictures on the front covers varied, but not much: two girls riding a lion, the yellow glow of a street lamp, the snow on the branches of fir trees. Some had extra features like a frozen stream, the dark turrets of a castle or the icy face of a glamorous witch. The book covers were glimpses of a worldwide phenomenon: a story published in 1950, and translated into nearly 50 languages, had sold more than one hundred million copies.

ABOVE The company by Manuel Harlan

One by one, each member of the company said how they had first encountered the story. Their experiences ranged from parents reading the book to them at bedtime to the cartoon and audio versions and the BBC series and the Disney movie. For one actor, the story was special because she came from a family of four. For two others, it was because as children their families had moved halfway across the world. One actor with parents who were religious hadn’t been allowed to read the book because there were witches in it.

Another actor with parents who were religious had been encouraged to read the book because it had a Christian theme. Someone said he hadn’t liked animals as a child but thought that if animals could be like this he would give them a second chance. Someone else said he had loved hiding in small places, but his family didn’t have a wardrobe.

“If only it had been called The Lion, The Witch and The Washing Machine.”

CONTINUED

E

ROBERT BUTLER The director, Sally Cookson, had read the book to her seven-year-old daughter: “She made me read it in almost one hit. I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs until I had done another chapter and another chapter and another chapter. He’s very clever, C S Lewis, because he ends each chapter with a real cliffhanger.” But when she re-read the book (when she was thinking about how it might be done on stage) she wanted more than cliffhangers. This time she was looking for “the heart of the story” and she didn’t have to look far. The first sentence introduces the Pevensie children: Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. The second sentence explains that the four of them: “were sent away from London because of the war”. A traumatic event gets mentioned in the briefest of ways, but the brevity itself was the clue. “Something monumental is happening in their lives that is forcing them away from everything they love and they are having to survive in a world in which they have no power and no idea what is going to happen in the future. These are real children.”

That first morning, the cast sat cross-legged on the floor as the stage designer, Rae Smith, took them through the 26 scenes that lead from a railway station in London to a house in the countryside, with an empty room and a big wardrobe. She stood next to a black box, a bare model of the set, with jagged white lines on the floor, which she said

RIGHT Helen Parke © Manuel Harlan

would light up and divide the stage. The cast looked on at the tiny representations of the characters that they would soon become.

There was a storyboard of 52 large printouts, beginning with ‘Leaving Home. The Train Sequence’. In the corner of each page, four terms were printed: ‘Scenic elements’, ‘Props’, ‘Flying’, ‘Puppets’. As Rae Smith moved from one printout to the next, the entries in these categories became more and more detailed. Some effects were easier to achieve on a desktop computer than on the stage: on a screen, you could make a figure disappear with a squiggle of smoke. It was exactly these challenges that couldn’t be planned in advance. They could only be worked out in rehearsals. Each of the actors would be encouraged to improvise around the script, and the writer in the room, Adam Peck, would be listening for everything that would make this story as accessible as possible to a contemporary audience. No-one would be using a Latin expression like “pax”. If an actor said they didn’t feel comfortable saying “I shan’t”, and would prefer to say “I won’t”, then that change went in. “It is set in war-torn Britain,” he said, “but they speak like modern children, they behave like modern children.”

The cast went down the steps from the foyer into the auditorium to have a look at the stage, following the same route that the audience would soon take as they entered with their green labels as evacuees.

In six weeks’ time the cast would be back here for the technical rehearsals and the previews, but from tomorrow onwards they were moving to two large rooms in south London. One was a rehearsal room where they would find posters had been stuck up on the walls explaining when Germany had invaded Poland and when Britain and France declared war on Germany and when Britain made plans to evacuate children from the cities to rural areas. Those precise documentary details were placed alongside fantastical ones: a map of Narnia and a chart that compared ‘Earth time’ and ‘Narnia time’.

In the room next door to that, the cast would find rows of costumes hung neatly on rails next to the ironing board and the sewing machine.

A spreadsheet of breathtaking complexity listed every character from the evacuees and Mrs Macready to squirrels, kangaroos, pheasants, badgers and white peacocks. For every character on the sheet there was a long row of columns for height, clothing size, shoe size, chest size, bra size, waist, hip and inside leg.

C S Lewis had used a mix of legends and mythologies—Greek, Roman, Christian, Norse—as he peopled his story with nymphs,

LEFT Rehearsal photograph

by Manuel Harlan

ROBERT BUTLER

LEFT James McHugh ABOVE Sally Cookson

fauns, and Father Christmas. This had annoyed his close friend, J R R Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, who had a much stricter sense of what could or couldn’t be included.

It was Lewis’s eclectic and expansive vision that now filled a large room in Clapham with clothes rack after clothes rack.

The story had started from a single image: “a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood”. This was a picture that had come to Lewis when he was 16 years old. But if the origins of the production were purely playful, its execution as a piece of theatre could not be, which was why the first morning ended on a brisk note of realism from the director. It was like the whistle blowing on the station platform. Today had been the only time when they would sit around talking. From tomorrow onwards, they would be up and on their feet. They would be entering their own imaginative world, and meeting their own challenges, not knowing exactly where things might lead or what might happen.

Everyone was asked to refrain if they possibly could from looking at their phones in the rehearsal room. There would be rehearsals on Saturdays. There would be some rehearsals in the evenings. Rehearsals would start at ten. Please be prompt.

ROBERT BUTLER, NOVEMBER 2019 Robert Butler is a feature writer and critic whose theatre publications include The Art of Darkness and The Alchemist Exposed (both published by Oberon).

RIGHT Nathan Louis-Fernand Rehearsal photographs

by Manuel Harlan

Note: Images have been removed from this digital edition for rights reasons.

EVERYONE K NOWS NARNIA Ella Risbridger

E

veryone knows Narnia, or some version of it. Even if you’ve never read CS Lewis (maybe you saw the 1980s BBC adaptation of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, or the big-budget blockbuster) you probably know Narnia: the land where it’s “always winter but never Christmas”, where the White Witch reigns supreme, where animals speak and ordinary children are the heroes long-promised in song to come and save the universe.

I don’t remember a time before I knew Narnia; I don’t remember reading The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe for the first time. I don’t really remember reading it at all: I just remember living in it, believing in it, waiting for it. I just remember being very sure that one day I would open an ordinary door and find a whole new world behind it.

It seems to me now that I have always known it: that some things for me simply are, and always will be, Narnia. Snow under a lamp-post; pine forests; marmalade roll. Turkish Delight, which will never not be (first and foremost) the taste of betrayal. I still can never see a box of Turkish Delight without wondering what kind of person would betray their brother and sisters for something that tasted like soap.

(I could have seen it for a box of Quality Street toffee pennies, maybe.

But never for Turkish Delight.) These things live in the ordinary world, as the Pevensies are fairly ordinary children: they bicker and they disagree and they love each other; they miss their parents and are annoyed by having to be polite to strangers and stay away from home.

And yet the Pevensies are transformed into kings and queens, as we are transformed as readers, as the world is transformed around us.

This is part of what makes CS Lewis so great: this juxtaposition of the mundane and the magical; the transformation of the ordinary into something rich and strange. The lamp-post would be ordinary in London; but shining in the depths of a dark forest it becomes the unforgettable symbol of a whole new world. The first winter I moved to London, it snowed properly; and as I ran down the Embankment on my way home all the great old-fashioned lamp-posts came on at once with their lovely orange light shining on the proper fat snowflakes falling all around, and I thought, idiotically: it’s Narnia!

CONTINUED

E

ELL A RISBRIDGER

And for a moment I half-believed it. For this is the kind of hold CS Lewis’s world has over so many of us: a sense that we could go back to Narnia at any time, a sense that one day we we might be kings again in a world where magic is real and animals speak and a great gold lion watches over us. The way through the wardrobe might be closed, true – but you never know where we might find another way back. You never know how we might find magic again. You never know what doors we might open when we least expect it, or when the ordinary stuff of life might become, somehow, transformed.

And that, of course, is theatre. That’s the whole point of theatre: that the ordinary fabric of life – wires and hard work and endless organisation – should become, under the light, something else.

It’s not a wardrobe, but the way to the theatre is as ordinary as a wardrobe: a train, a bus, getting everyone into the car with their coats on and their shoes on and the right number of children and the right number of tickets. Even the theatre foyer, with the merchandise and the balloons and programmes, is sort-of ordinary; and the door to the theatre itself quite ordinary with a green Emergency Exit sign glowing ordinarily over the top of it. Even once you’re in, and sitting down, it’s still sort-of the same world that you know every day. And yet, once the house lights go down and the stage lights come up, it becomes something entirely different. We all agree to believe that it’s something different, and done right it’s impossible not to believe.

It is an impossible magic trick: how can this man in the programme – this grown-up man, with degrees and TV credits – be a faun? How can this quite ordinary girl – who is about your age, and probably has to go to school and things – be allowed to have a bow and arrow? How can it possibly be that out of some puppets and some lights and some fabric and some paint, a real live lion will stand before you and speak?

For someone made all of it: this world that’s about to open up for you.

A team of people painted the backdrops, and sewed the costumes, and practised for hours; and tried to get it right; and sketched and built and danced and tried again; and were late home; and stuck in traffic on the way back from the theatre; and tired and cross and stressed in an ordinary grown-up sort of way. You know all this, when you go to the theatre. You know it’s impossible that what you’re seeing is real, in the same way I must have known when I read The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe for the first time that it was “just a story”.

And yet – and yet it was real to me, as this is real to you, and that’s the purest magic there is: the transfiguration of words into a living, breathing world.

ELLA RISBRIDGER, NOVEMBER 2019 Ella Risbridger’s first cookbook, Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For), is out now. She is also the editor of Set Me On Fire: A Poem For Every Feeling, an anthology of poems that are actually good. You can buy both her books in all good bookshops; and you can find her in all the usual places on the internet.

C S LE WIS

“Our schoolgirls have arrived and all seem to me to be very nice, unaffected creatures and all most flatteringly delighted with their surroundings...

But modern children are poor creatures.

They keep coming to Maureen and asking, ‘What shall we do now?’”

CS Lewis writing to his brother Warnie in September 1939

CS LEWIS (1898–1963) Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29 November 1898 in Belfast. When he was nine, his mother died and he was sent to boarding school in England. By 1917 he was on his way to the University of Oxford on a scholarship, but quickly abandoned his studies to join the army, arriving in France on his 19th birthday. A bout of trench fever and a battle wound brought him home and, after the war, he went back to Oxford where he took a double First in classics and philosophy, followed, a year later, by a First in English. He then settled into life as a fellow of Madgalen College, Oxford, where he soon proved himself to be a brilliant tutor and lecturer.

From the 1930s, for a period of around 16 years, Lewis was part of a group of writers called ‘the Inklings’, who met regularly and included such fellow writers as Neville Coghill and JRR Tolkien. In 1935 he was asked to write a volume on 16th-century English literature, and The Allegory of Love: a Study in Medieval Tradition subsequently became a standard work on the subject.

Also in the 1930s, he began writing an allegorical science fiction trilogy, which eventually comprised Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945).

Having lost the religious faith of his childhood, Lewis found a new belief in God at Oxford and, by 1931, he was a practising member of the Church of England. During World War II he made several series of radio broadcasts on Christian behaviour and belief, later collected and published as Mere Christianity, proving enormously popular as a simple presentation of Christian belief. During 1941 The Guardian published 31 weekly instalments of The Screwtape Letters; imaginary letters from an experienced devil to his young nephew, Wormwood, just starting out in the business of catching human souls.

It was also during the war, when several schoolgirls were evacuated to his house, that Lewis, surprised and saddened by how little they had read and how few good books for children were available, began to write for children. However, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, the first of the seven Chronicles of Narnia, was not published until 1950.

Lewis lived the life of a comfortable bachelor don amongst his scholarly colleagues, but he did find love later in life. He conducted a lively correspondence with an American poet, Joy Davidman Gresham, and, when they eventually met, friendship gradually blossomed into love. However, their time together was short – she died of cancer in 1960 at the age of 45. She did help Lewis write two important books: a novel that became Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves. A year after Joy’s death, under a pseudonym, Lewis published an account of their relationship in A Grief Observed. He died himself only three years later, aged 65.

Julie Summers

F

rom today’s perspective, a situation where upwards of a million families would agree to send their children away from home, to strangers in the countryside, or even abroad, for an unknown period is almost unimaginable. Yet during the Second World War this happened not once, not twice but four times.

It is estimated that over three million British children were evacuated between 1939 and 1945. They were sent on a mixture of private and government sponsored schemes to coastal towns, to the countryside, to Canada, the USA, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Some children spent six years living away from home. These were in the minority. Most spent anything from a matter of weeks or months to several years in billets, with extended family or living with strangers abroad. They returned, not en masse in May 1945, but randomly at stages throughout the war.

There were three waves of evacuation in Britain and one in Southeast Asia. The first was in September 1939 when 1.5 million women and children were moved from the major cities to the countryside in the space of three days. The second came in 1940 in response to the threat of invasion after the fall of France when over 200,000 people were moved out of danger areas, such as the coastal towns and some 20,000 were sent to live abroad.

The third wave, affecting around 1 million people came in the summer of 1944 when flying bombs threatened London and south-east England. An almost forgotten evacuation took place in late 1941 and early 1942, when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. Thousands of families fled to safety in Australia, though almost as many were imprisoned in civilian camps throughout Southeast Asia.

Of the three major evacuation movements in Britain, the first, codenamed Operation Pied Piper, is the best known. It took place at the beginning of September 1939 in response to the threat that the government most feared, – aerial bombardment of Britain’s cities. From the mid-1920s attention had been focused on aerial warfare as the newest and most uncertain factor in any future war. The Home Office was convinced that a major threat from a gas attack was to be expected and by December 1937 over 19

JULIE SUMMERS

million containers for gas masks had been produced. The public understood the horrors of gas in the First World War trenches.

Gas warfare and air raids were vividly linked in their minds and gas was the great unknown factor in a war against civilians.

By the summer of 1939 the government had decided evacuation should be carried out quickly, efficiently and immediately before the war began. Too long beforehand and the population would not accept it. Once war had begun, the bombing of Britain’s cities could start within hours. With almost all schools about to start the new academic year it was decided that Operation Pied Piper should be launched. The order to commence was issued at 11:07am on Thursday 31 August with the blunt message: ‘Evacuate forthwith’.

Although evacuation was not compulsory, enormous pressure was put on families, and on mothers in particular, to heed the government advice and send their children away.

A series of frightening posters was published including one in which a mother is standing under a tree in the country with her two sons. A shadowy figure of Hitler stands behind her whispering in her ear ‘Take them back, take them back, take them back!’.

The caption, in huge red letters, reads ‘DON’T do it mother!’ To refuse to evacuate your children was to swim against the tide.

The Ministry of Health came up with a list of four categories of people to be evacuated: pregnant women, mothers with children under five years of age, schoolchildren between the ages of five and fifteen and the blind and the disabled ‘whose removal was feasible’.

This last category often had the best experience of evacuation as they were moved with their schools to large properties, even a castle in one case, and kept together. For the unaccompanied children, however, there was no such comfort and familiarity.

Children wearing luggage labels left for undisclosed destinations clutching gas masks, small suitcases and provisions. Mothers pushing prams or leading small children by the hand jostled to squeeze into a seat on the trains and buses provided. The blind and disabled, accompanied by carers, were shepherded towards special transport that would take them into the countryside. It was a gift for press photographers: a tearful toddler here, a stiff-upper-

lipped boy there, a family group of six children waving out of a train window, a harassed mother struggling with enough clutter for three hands, leaning towards a tear-away child straining at her reins.

Once they arrived in the country towns and villages, mothers and toddlers, unaccompanied schoolchildren, teachers and those who had offered to accompany the school parties as assistants were squeezed into village halls, marquees, churches and schools to be selected by host families. This was the aspect of evacuation that was the most distressing and is still remembered with horror by many who experienced evacuation. One girl wrote later of her arrival in a village where they were gathered in a field.

So far the organisation had been perfect. But the scene which ensued was more akin to a cattle- or slave-market than anything else. The prospective foster mothers ‌ walked about the field picking out what they considered to be the most presentable specimens, and then harassed the poor billeting officers for the registration slips which were essential if they were to get the necessary cash for food and lodging from the government.

This situation was repeated all over the country. Children and mothers were looked over, picked, left; family members were separated, kept together, mixed and matched; strong boys went to farms, weaker ones were not chosen, well-dressed little girls were quickly scooped up; siblings languished at the back of the halls, grasping each other’s hands and hoping not to be split up. Hard-pressed billeting officers were still knocking on doors at ten or eleven o’clock at night in those first few days, desperately trying to persuade unwilling householders to take tired, grubby, tearful children, still clutching their suitcases, gas masks and wearing their now bedraggled luggage labels.

CONTINUED

E

Unlike evacuation, billeting was compulsory. The government realised that the best way to accommodate the vast numbers of children who would need to be moved to the countryside was to demand that households in so-called ‘reception areas’ take evacuees into their homes. The host families were given a small allowance to cover the costs of feeding and hosting the children billeted with them but nothing had prepared either the evacuees or their hosts for the emotional trauma of the whole experience. Some children settled down and were happy with their host families, others were not and teachers who had accompanied the parties found themselves negotiating between frazzled mothers and tearful six- or seven-year-olds. In those first few weeks of upheaval many life-long memories were formed. Some children returned to the cities as they could not cope with the countryside, others were brought back by parents who found the separation too agonising. By Christmas 1939 almost half the unaccompanied school children who had left the major cities in September were back with their families.

For those children who stayed in the countryside and settled down there was much to be gained from their experience.

Some learned to love the peace and quiet of village life after the hustle and bustle of the city. Many flourished on country fare and fresh air, and those who lived on farms learned to work with animals or help with the harvest. Friendships between

host families and evacuees grew ever closer and for some it became a new way of life from which they would never return.

Authors and novelists in the post-war era found evacuation to be a rich area for inspiration. C S Lewis used it in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe as a conceit to remove the four Pevensie children from their house in London and send them to live with Professor Digory Kirke in the English countryside. Lewis explained that the story, written in 1950 but set in 1940, was based on four schoolgirls who were evacuated from London to Lewis’s home in Oxford over the course of the war. He once wrote: “I never appreciated children till the war brought them to me.”

The story of the Second World War evacuations presents a complex and at times distressing picture. It forms a key part of our social history and its impact is still felt in families today.

JULIE SUMMERS, OXFORD, NOVEMBER 2019 Julie Summers is an award-winning author and historian. Author of 13 books, she has specialised in the social impact of the Second World War on civilians.

When the Children Came Home (2011) focuses on the stories of children returning home after evacuation. She is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at St Hilda’s College.

“This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!’ thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet.

‘I wonder is that more moth balls?’ she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. ‘This is very strange’, she said, and went on a step or two further.”

CS Lewis, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, 1950

Linford Johnson, Helen Parke, Omari Bernard, Amber Cayasso

Stuart Neal

U T

To Lucy Barfield My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realised that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be Your affectionate Godfather, CS Lewis

Emily Benjamin and Beverly Rudd Rehearsal photos by Manuel Harlan.

USE CRAYONS, PAINT AND YOUR IMAGINATION TO COLOUR IN THE LION’S FACE

© Wahyu Romdhoni

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE CAST

Femi Akinfolarin

Sebastian Charles

TRAINING Bird College, Brit School of Performing Arts.

TRAINING East 15 Acting School. Nominated for the Spotlight Prize, 2014.

THEATRE includes Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Palladium; Man of La Mancha at the Coliseum; and Doctor Dolittle on UK tour.

THEATRE includes War Horse for the National Theatre on tour; Narrator in Sleeping Beauty for English National Ballet; A Clockwork Orange for Action to the Word at Park Theatre; Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at National Theatre’s River Stage and at Latitude; The Selfish Giant at the Arcola; Gobsmacked The Show on international tour; Club Red for Highly Sprung Performance Company; Humming Bird for Imagineer; and 60 Hugs for Frantic Assembly.

PETER PEVENSIE

TELEVISION includes Breaking of the Bands, and contestant in Off By Heart Shakespeare.

SHORT FILM includes Rumet.

MUSIC VIDEO includes dancing in ‘Little Ones’ and in Alfie Boe – ‘As Time Goes By’.

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / UNDERSTUDY ASLAN

FILM includes Half Moon Investigations and Doctors.

Emily Benjamin

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / UNDERSTUDY WHITE WITCH / MRS MACREADY / MRS BEAVER TRAINING Performance Preparation Academy, Guildford.

THEATRE includes Bat Out of Hell – The Musical at Manchester Opera House, London Coliseum, Ed Mirvish Theatre Toronto and Dominion, London; and Princess Pearl Zog: Live! on UK tour.

Omari Bernard MAUGRIM

TRAINING Central School of Ballet, Millennium Performing Arts and Identity School of Acting.

THEATRE includes Bodyguard in the West End and on tour; Fame on UK tour; Starlight Express in Germany and Asia tour; Prodigals at the Edinburgh Fringe and Coventry; and the Cat in Dick Whittington at New Wimbledon and Bristol.

TELEVISION includes The Merry Widow, Porgy and Bess Two Boys and Castor and Pollux for English National Opera.

FILM includes Aladdin, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Ready Player One.

Amber Cayasso

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / UNDERSTUDY MAUGRIM TRAINING Body Work Company 2018 and workshops with leading choreographers.

THEATRE This is her professional stage debut.

She is a member of the HipHop company, Elementz Entertainment.

Andro Cowperthwaite ENSEMBLE / UNDERSTUDY MR TUMNUS TRAINING Drama Centre London.

THEATRE includes Salome and Dido, Queen of Carthage for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Electra; Golden Boy and Corpus Christi.

SINGING/SONGWRITING includes a world tour with the band Jungle; and festival appearances at Glastonbury, Coachella and Later... with Jools Holland.

FILM includes Cold Blow Lane, The Plant and Abstract.

Nicky Cross

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / FIGHT CAPTAIN TRAINING Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.

THEATRE includes 002 for Secret Cinema’s Casino Royale; Joey/Topthorn Puppeteer in War Horse at the National Theatre and on UK tour; Private Dick Whittington at the Belgrade Coventry; One Man, Two Guvnors and Deadly Nightcap at Theatre Royal Windsor; An Ideal Husband and Pool’s Paradise at The Manor Pavilion, Sidmouth; Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom for Fiery Angel/The Limelight Group/UK tour; and Junket for The Miniaturists at the Arcola.

FILM include The Dog Thrower! and Waking David.

Tim Dalling

David Emmings

TRAINING Tim Dalling has been performing, clowning, songwriting and making theatre and music since he left Glasgow School of Art in 1982.

TRAINING Central School of Speech and Drama in Collaborative and Devised Theatre.

MUSICIAN

THEATRE includes work with Kneehigh, including Dancing Frog and Dead Dog in a Suitcase; James and the Giant Peach and A Christmas Carol with Northern Stage; and La Strada in the West End. MUSIC For 25 years he was the kilted fall-guy in the internationally renowned comedy-folk trio The Old Rope String Band; and he performs as a solo songwriter in his one-man show Aye, Coyote!

Laura Elphinstone WHITE WITCH / MRS MACREADY

SCHRÖDINGER / HEAD CRUEL / PUPPETEER

THEATRE includes Tao of Glass for MIF/ Improbable; The Magic Flute for English National Opera/Complicité; Grimm Tales at the Unicorn; Wings at the Young Vic; The Missing Light at the Old Vic; War Horse and Elephantom at the National Theatre; Sleeping Beauty and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Bristol Old Vic; Something Very Far Away for Make Mend and Do; Father Christmas at the Lyric Hammersmith; and The Confetti Maker at New Diorama.

FILM & TELEVISION include Sherlock Holmes, The Ruth Ellis Files, The Homeless Polar Bear, Alice and Mime Poker.

WRITING includes BUCKETS for Bike Shed Theatre/Applecart Arts and Centenary Buffett for Theatre Royal Plymouth/Exeter Phoenix.

TRAINING Guildhall.

THEATRE includes Young Marx at The Bridge; Rutherford and Son at Sheffield Crucible; My Country (also on tour), Jane Eyre (also Bristol Old Vic), Pains of Youth and Women of Troy at the National Theatre; Romeo and Juliet (as Mercutio) at the Rose Kingston; The White Devil and The Crucible (also West End) for the RSC; Virgin and Heartbreak House at Watford Palace; If you don’t let us dream we won’t let you sleep, Love and Information, Breathing Corpses and Country Music at the Royal Court; Chalet Lines at the Bush; Utopia at Soho/Live Newcastle; Top Girls (also Trafalgar Studios) and A Month in the Country at Chichester Festival Theatre; Bedroom Farce at West Yorkshire Playhouse; Far from the Madding Crowd for English Touring Theatre; Glass Eels at Hampstead; Scenes from an Execution at Hackney Empire; Tom & Viv at the Almeida; Lysistrata at the Arcola; and Pictures of Clay at Manchester Royal Exchange.

TELEVISION includes Game of Thrones, Line of Duty, Chernobyl, My Country, Vera, The Trial: A Murder in the Family, Call the Midwife, Wendy & Peter, Esio Trot, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Holby City, Doctors, My So Called Life Sentence and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

FILM includes Military Wives Choir, Peterloo, Leave to Remain and The History Boys.

RADIO Winner of the Carleton Hobbs Radio Award 2004.

James Gow MUSICIAN

TRAINING BA in Music from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

MUSIC He has performed with or alongside several bands including Lunch Money Life, Cocos Lovers, Molly’s Lips, Eleven Magpies and Three Cane Whale. He also performs as a solo artist as Flames Pow. THEATRE includes The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), Tristan & Yseult and Brief Encounter for Kneehigh; 100: UnEarth for WildWorks; James and the Giant Peach at Leeds Playhouse; Ugly Chief for Victoria Melody; and Siyanda, Protector of Plants for Theatre-Rites.

Shalisha James-Davis SUSAN PEVENSIE

TRAINING National Youth Theatre.

THEATRE includes Romeo and Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe; If We Were Older and Our Country’s Good at the National Theatre; and The Wolves at Stratford East.

TELEVISION includes The Split 2, Alex Rider, Industry, Silent Witness, Next of Kin, Vera and Class.

FILM includes Bay of Silence, Mary Queen of Scots and Night Out.

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE CAST

Linford Johnson ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / UNDERSTUDY PETER / EDMUND

TRAINING Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.

THEATRE includes As You Like It (for NT Public Acts), War Horse (on UK and international tour) and Pinocchio for the National Theatre; Much Ado About Nothing for Northern Broadsides; The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at Park Theatre; The Tempest and Macbeth for Iris; Hair for Hope Mill; Showboat at Sheffield Crucible and in the West End; Alice’s Adventures Underground for Les Enfants Terribles; Territory at the Lowry; Macbeth for Out of Joint; The Meeting at the Pleasance, Islington and Edinburgh; The Night of 1000 Stars at the Royal Albert Hall; The Martyr at Soho Theatre; Peter Polycarpou – Songs of My Life at the Garrick; and West End Heroes at the Dominion.

Wil Johnson

ASLAN / PROFESSOR KIRKE THEATRE includes Sweat at the Donmar Warehouse and in the West End; Glengarry Glen Ross on UK tour; Leave Taking at the Bush (Offie Award for Best Supporting Actor 2019), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Old Vic; King Lear at the Royal Exchange Manchester; A Wolf In Snakeskin Shoes at the Tricycle, The Great Goat Bubble at Druid, Galway; Serious Money at Birmingham Rep; Torn at the Arcola; Redundant at the Royal Court; Othello at the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh; A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew at the Southern Shakespeare Festival, USA; The Queen and I in the West End; and Fuente Ovejuna at the National Theatre.

TELEVISION includes Carnival Row, Outlander, Vera, Lewis, Waking the Dead, Hetty Feather, The Five, Clocking Off, Moving On, Babyfather, Cracker, Waterloo Road, Anna Lee and Teaching Matthew.

FILM includes Macbeth, Anuvahood, In a Better World, Adulthood, Yes!, Midnight Breaks, Dead End and Babymother.

REHE ARSAL PHOTOGR APHS BY MANUEL HARL AN

Keziah Joseph

John Leader

TRAINING Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Winner of the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award 2016; she became a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company.

THEATRE includes A Monster Calls at The Old Vic; Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, Henry V, Doctor Faustus and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: A Reimagining at Shakespeare’s Globe; The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; Peter Pan and War Horse at the National Theatre; Chigger Foot Boys for Tara Arts; Running Wild at Regent’s Park Open Air; Romeo and Juliet at the Orange Tree; Beasty Baby for Theatre Rites/Polka Theatre; and Alice’s Adventures Underground for Les Enfants Terribles.

LUCY PEVENSIE

THEATRE includes Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear at the National Theatre; Sweeney Todd at Liverpool Everyman; The Paper Man for Improbable/Soho Theatre; Dick Whittington at the Lyric Hammersmith; As You Like It at Regent’s Park Open Air; The Jungle Book on UK tour; Kanye The First at HighTide festival; and Silver Lining at the Rose, Kingston, and on UK tour.

SHORT FILMS include Hush.

RADIO includes The Confidential Agent, Watership Down, The Thickness, Jezebel, Wild Things, Northanger Abbey, Assata Shakur: The FBI’s Most Wanted Woman, The Mother, Doctor Who – Cold Vengeance and Doctor Who – Antillia the Lost.

EDMUND PEVENSIE

Mitch Leow ENSEMBLE

TRAINING Millennium Theatre College, London.

THEATRE includes The Lion King at the Lyceum; Miss Saigon and Aladdin at the Prince Edward; Barnum at Chichester Festival Theatre; Bent at Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble, Singapore; and Hungry at TheatreWorks Singapore.

LEFT John Leader, Keziah Joseph, Femi Akinfolarin, and Shalisha James-Davis.

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE CAST OPERA includes Turandot at the Royal Opera House; and Madam Butterfly at the Coliseum.

TELEVISION includes The Sound of Musicals, Behind the Scenes for Disney’s The Lion King and Aladdin, and Olivier Awards presentations for Miss Saigon and The Lion King tribute for Tim Rice.

FILM/SHORT FILM includes War and Miss Saigon (Live) for Cameron Mackintosh Ltd.

James McHugh

OFFSTAGE SWING / UNDERSTUDY MR BEAVER TRAINING Laine Theatre Arts.

THEATRE includes Wicked in the West End; Tarzan for Disney; and Grease, directed and choreographed by Gary Lloyd.

Harry Miller MUSICIAN

Nathan Louis-Fernand OFFSTAGE SWING

THEATRE The Lion King in the West End; Sleeping Beauty at Hackney Empire; Carousel for Opera North; Man in the Mirror on UK tour; and Oliver! for Cameron Mackintosh Ltd. MUSIC VIDEO includes Nuuxs Snowflakes.

FILM includes Street Dancer 3D.

TRAINING The Academy of Contemporary Music, graduating in 2018.

THEATRE includes Peter Pan at the National Theatre; and The Merry Wives of Windsor at Theatre Royal Bath.

MUSIC Composed music for UK touring productions of Richard III and Oedipus & Antigone for Beyond The Horizon; he also tours the country with his own solo music project, having supported artists such as Syd Arthur, Nick Harper and Noah and The Whale’s Matt Owens.

Mei Mac

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER THEATRE includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park Open Air; Wolf Totem for Handspring and National Theatre Studio; Under the Umbrella for the Belgrade Coventry; The Apology and Thatcher in China for Yellow Earth and NT Studio; Jackie the Baboon for Brunskill and Grimes; Redemption for NT Studio; Romeo and Juliet for Papergang; 101 Dalmatians, The BFG and Open House at Birmingham Rep; Summer Times at Leeds Playhouse; Peter Pan in Scarlet at Oxford Playhouse/New Vic Theatre; Snow Child for York Theatre Royal; Mononoke for Studio Ghibli international tour; Wild Swans at the Young Vic; Nowhere to Go at the Roundhouse; and Backbone Bistro at the Bush.

FILM & TELEVISION include My Country, Faa Iheihe, The Upgrade and Interns.

MOVEMENT DIRECTION Resident at Stitchin’ Fiction; Zen for Yellow Earth; Oliver for Backbone; Response to: Orange Polar Bear at Birmingham Rep; and Gwei Mui / Ghost Girl for Jen Tang.

Pat Moran MUSICIAN

TRAINING California Institute of the Arts (USA), earning a Performer/Composer dual focus MFA. THEATRE He has worked extensively as a theatre multi-instrumentalist and music director. Recent work includes Brief Encounter, Tristan & Yseult and 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips for Kneehigh; Hireth for O Region; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe; Sleeping Beauty at Bristol Old Vic; and An Audience with Meow Meow at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

MUSIC He was resident composer/lyricist/ musical director/multi-instrumentalist for the San Francisco Mime Troupe from 2007– 2013. He is an active composer currently working as a solo artist and with the projects PM Syndicate, Yesterday’s Camel and Unreliable Witness.

Stuart Neal

Beverly Rudd

THEATRE includes The Producers at the Royal Exchange Manchester; 42nd Street and Lord of the Rings at Theatre Royal Drury Lane; The Grinning Man at Bristol Old Vic; The Winter’s Tale and Harlequinade for Kenneth Branagh Company; Carousel on national tour for Opera North; Finding Neverland for American Repertory Theatre, and Curve Leicester; Macbeth for NY Park Avenue Armory, and Manchester International Festival; Follies for Opéra de Toulon; West Side Story for the RSC at Sage Gateshead; Pippin at Menier Chocolate Factory; Little Shop of Horrors at Kilworth House Theatre; Cowardy Custard on national tour; A Christmas Carol at Leeds Playhouse; The Pros, The Cons and a Screw at Derby Theatre; La Cage aux Folles at the Playhouse; Piaf at the Donmar Warehouse; Evita at the Adelphi; Aladdin at the Old Vic; Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward; and Cats on national tour.

TRAINING LAMDA.

MR TUMNUS

SHORT FILMS include Artemis Fowl, Cinderella, and Les Misérables.

MRS BEAVER

THEATRE includes Anna Bella Eema at the Arcola; Dead Dog in a Suitcase (UK and international tour), Brief Encounter (Lowry and Haymarket Empire Cinema and national tour), and Tin Drum (UK tour) for Kneehigh; Peter Pan, The Beggar’s Opera and Into the Woods at Regent’s Park Open Air; James and the Giant Peach at Leeds Playhouse; Much Ado About Nothing at the Royal Exchange Manchester; Soho Cinders at the Soho Theatre; The Little Mermaid at Bristol Old Vic; Acorn Antiques the Musical on UK tour; Girls Just Want to Have Fun for Limelight/ Fiery Angel; The Magistrate at the National Theatre; Days of Significance for the RSC/ Tricycle; Titus Andronicus for Paradoxos; and The Hole Story for Paines Plough.

TELEVISION includes Trollied (series regular); Twirly Woo, The Function Room, Coronation Street, Shameless, Him & Her, Inn Mates, Scallywagga, Guantanamo Phil, Octavia, and No Angels.

FILM includes Mad, Bad & Sad and Service.

Dean Nolan MR BEAVER

THEATRE includes Billionaire Boy for the Nuffield Southampton/tour; Kneehigh’s Brief Encounter and Steptoe and Son both in the West End; Sweeney Todd, Fiddler on the Roof, The Conquest of the South Pole and Romeo and Juliet all for Liverpool Everyman; Big Fish at the Other Palace; Baddies for the Unicorn; Measure for Measure, The Oresteia, Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Knight of the Burning Pestle for Shakespeare’s Globe and Wanamaker Playhouse; and The Winter’s Tale at Regent’s Park.

FILM & TELEVISION include the upcoming series Quiz, Flack, Will, London Road, Pan, Macbeth and Ashes to Ashes.

AWARDS include RTS Award for Best Performance in a Comedy for Massive.

Tinovimbanashe Sibanda OFFSTAGE SWING / DANCE CAPTAIN TRAINING Bird College THEATRE includes Jesus Christ Superstar at the Barbican Centre; Strictly Ballroom at the Piccadilly; Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air; and Cinderella and Peter Pan at the Marlowe, Canterbury.

Millicent Wong

ENSEMBLE / PUPPETEER / UNDERSTUDY LUCY

Helen Parke ENSEMBLE

THEATRE includes Satyagraha for LA Opera; and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse.

CIRCUS THEATRE includes Paper Memories for Jabuti Theatre; In C for the British Paraorchestra and Extraordinary Bodies; Khoj for Cirque Bijou and Nutkhut; Standing on the Shoulders of Giants for Upswing; Bianco for NoFit State; The Last Waltz for The Invisible Circus; and Lola for Bilbao Festival of Contemporary Theatre and Dance.

TRAINING Royal Central School of Speech & Drama.

THEATRE includes The King of Hell’s Palace at Hampstead; Pah-La at the Royal Court; Forbidden City and Portrait of an Empress for Singapore Repertory Theatre; Beauty World for Dick Lee Entertainment; and Hanuman for Imitating the Dog. TELEVISION includes Dracula.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Laura Elphinstone; Linford Johnson, Stuart Neal, Emily Benjamin, Sebastian Charles, David Emmings; and Millicent Wong.

ABOVE Omari Bernard LEFT Mitch Leow RIGHT Dean Nolan, Beverly Rudd, Andro Cowperthwaite, Tinovimbanashe Sibanda.

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE CAST

RIGHT Amber Cayasso BELOW Wil Johnson

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE PRODUC TION Sally Cookson DIRECTOR

Sally Cookson trained at LAMDA and worked as an actor for ten years before embarking on a freelance directing career.

THEATRE For the Old Vic, London, A Monster Calls (Olivier Award-winner; devised, based on the novel by Patrick Ness).

For Elliot & Harper Productions and Leeds Playhouse The Lion,The Witch & The Wardrobe (devised, based on the novel by CS Lewis). For the National Theatre Jane Eyre (devised, based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë) and Peter Pan (nominated for Olivier; devised, based on the novel and play by JM Barrie – both coproductions with Bristol Old Vic). For Kenny Wax Productions La Strada (devised, based on the film by Fellini), Hetty Feather (nominated for Olivier; devised, based on the novel by Jaqueline Wilson), and We’re Going On A Bear Hunt (devised, based on the book by Michael Rosen). For The Rose Theatre Kingston Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. For Bristol Old Vic Theatre School Trojan Women, adapted by Brendan Kennelly.

She is an Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic where productions include Jane Eyre, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Treasure Island, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, Clown, Strange Case, Pericles, Pains of Youth, and The Visit.

Her numerous collaborations with Travelling Light theatre include Strictly Balti by Saikat Ahammed, The Ugly Duckling (devised, based on Hans Christian Andersen), Boing! (devised), How Cold My Toes (devised), Shadowplay (devised), Cloudland (devised, based on the book by John Burningham), Lenny by Francis Monty, and Bob the Man on the Moon (devised, based on the book by Simon Bartram).

For Tobacco Factory Theatre One Hundred and One Dalmatians (devised, based on the book by Dodie Smith), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (devised, based on Arabian Nights), and Cinderella – A Fairytale (devised, based on Brothers Grimm; nominated for Olivier Award).

For Scamp Theatre Stick Man (devised, based on the book by Julia Donaldson).

For Freckle Theatre Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales (devised, based on the book by Julia Donaldson).

Rae Smith DESIGNER

THEATRE includes recently at the National Theatre Translations, Barber Shop Chronicles (also BAM, Roundhouse and world tour), and This House (also West End and UK tour); Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic, in New York and in the West End; Rosmersholm, The

Night of the Iguana, and The Goat or Who Is Sylvia in the West End; and Stella at Brighton Festival, Hoxton Hall and Holland Festival.

Other designs for the National Theatre include War Horse (Tony and Olivier Awards), Wonder.Land, The Light Princess and Pillars of the Community.

OPERA includes Pelleas and Mellisande for Scottish Opera; Cavelleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci at the Met, New York; Benvenuto Cellini for English National Opera; Rusalka at Glyndebourne; and The Ring Cycle, which won the Grand Prix for outstanding achievement in opera, at Opera du Rhin.

DANCE includes The Tempest and Prince of the Pagodas for Birmingham Royal Ballet; and The Rite of Spring and Petrushka for Fabulous Beast. Future work includes Paradise and Nozzi di Figaro for Aix en Provence.

OTHER WORK includes live drawing for War Horse in Concert with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. www.raesmith.co.uk

Benji Bower

COMPOSER / MUSIC DIRECTOR THEATRE as composer/music director, includes A Monster Calls at the Old Vic; Tom and Varmints at Sadler’s Wells; The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; Peter Pan and Jane Eyre at the National Theatre; Hetty Feather in London and on tour; We’re Going on a Bear Hunt for KW & NB Ltd; Outpost for Green Ginger; Romeo and Juliet for the Rose Kingston; Sleeping Beauty, Jane Eyre, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, Strong Case and Aesop’s Fables for Bristol Old Vic; 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Bob the Man on the Moon, Lost and Found and Ugly Duckling for Tobacco Factory/Travelling Light; Orpheus and the Furies and Table of Delights for Damfino; Pirate Gran, Toddler and Other Terrific Tales and Stick Man for Scamp; and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings for Little Angel/Kneehigh.

FILM & TELEVISION Composing includes Faster Harder Stronger, Rude Britannia, Comics Britannia, The Wonder of Animals, Castles, Countryfile, The Sky at Night, Panorama, Cult of a Suicide Bomber, Wind Farm Wars, Hollyoaks and Weekend Retreat.

MUSIC As a musician, he has worked with Bonobo, Alice Russell, 100 Strong, Kneehigh Theatre, Mark Pritchard and Jermaine Clement. With Underscene he has recorded Sulston Connection, Pacific Heights, New World Disorder, Fingers and Thumbs and Return of the Wob.

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE PRODUC TION

WRITER IN THE ROOM Adam Peck is a playwright and dramaturg.

He has been an Associate Artist at Bristol Old Vic since 2013.

THEATRE includes A Monster Calls at the Old Vic (Olivier Award for Best Family and Entertainment); The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; the OFFIE-winning and Olivier Award nominated Cinderella: A Fairytale, 101 Dalmatians and Bonnie & Clyde at Tobacco Factory Theatres; Igloo, Sleeping Beauty, Medusa, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Minotaur and Only at Bristol Old Vic; Father Christmas at the Lyric Hammersmith and Septimus Bean & His Amazing Machine at the Unicorn.

DANCE includes Tom and Varmints at Sadler’s Wells; Fagin’s Twist for Avant Garde Dance; the My First Ballet series (2014-17) for English National Ballet.

Dan Canham MOVEMENT DIRECTOR

Dan Canham is a contemporary performance maker and choreographer.

Through his company, Still House, he makes socially engaged work that foregrounds under-heard stories and celebrates those performing at its heart.

Still House works 30 Cecil Street and Of Riders and Running Horses have toured extensively throughout the UK and internationally. His latest, SESSION, is an outdoor dance event made in collaboration with 25+ young performers in Tottenham.

Commissioned by LIFT Festival, it premiered at LIFT 2018 before undertaking two UK tours.

As a movement director, his credits include A Monster Calls at the Old Vic/Bristol Old Vic; Peter Pan and Jane Eyre (also Bristol Old Vic) at the National Theatre; The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; Romeo + Juliet at the Rose Theatre Kingston; 101 Dalmatians for Tobacco Factory Theatres; Shooting with Light for Idle Motion; and Once Upon a Time for Aga Blonksa.

As a performer he has worked with DV8 Physical Theatre, Kneehigh Theatre, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Punchdrunk and the National Theatre. www.stillhouse.co.uk

Bruno Poet LIGHTING DESIGNER

THEATRE includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Julius Caesar at The Bridge; Amadeus for Royal Danish Theatre; The Convert at the Young Vic; Stories, Saint George and the Dragon, Frankenstein, London Road, Timon of Athens, Treasure Island, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, From Morning to Midnight and Travelling Light at the National Theatre; Fortune’s Fool and Sweet Bird of Youth at the Old Vic; Coram Boy at Bristol Old Vic, Midnight’s Children and The Two Gentlemen of Verona for the RSC; Tina: The Musical, Miss Saigon (also Broadway, Japan, and UK tour) and From Here to Eternity in the West End; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for West Yorkshire Playhouse; Oklahoma! for Grange Park Opera; and Carousel for Opera North.

OPERA & BALLET include The Unknown Soldier for the Royal Ballet; Akhnaten at the Metropolitan Opera House New York; The Merry Widow, Akhnaten, Aida and Carmen for English National Opera; Il Trovatore in Turin and for Royal Danish Opera; Don Giovanni for Shlomo Lahat Opera House; Marco Polo at Guangzhou Opera House; Carmen for Bregenzer Festspiele; Connectome, Other Stories and Les Enfants Terribles for the Royal Ballet; Otello, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagony, I Due Foscari, Don Giovanni and La Donna Del Lago at the Royal Opera House, Al Gran Sole Carico d’Amore for Salzburg Festival; Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Carmen for Den Norske Opera, Freischütz, Cavalleria Rusticana, Il Pagliacci and The Cunning Little Vixen for Royal Danish Opera; and Macbeth and Trovatore for Opera Monte Carlo.

CONCERTS include Bjork’s Cornucopia at The Shed, New York & Sigur Ros’ 2012–13 & 2017 World Tours.

AWARDS His design for Rusalka at Sydney Opera House won the Australian Green Room Award. He won Olivier Knight of Illumination and whatsonstage awards for lighting Frankenstein at the National Theatre. .

Ian Dickinson FOR AUTOGRAPH SOUND DESIGNER

Ian Dickinson has been a member of the Autograph design team since 2009.

THEATRE includes recently the UK tour of A Taste of Honey; Europe, Elegy, Roots and The Weir at the Donmar Warehouse; Small Island, Angels in America (also New York), Translations, Husbands and Sons, Common, Evening at the Talk House, The Red Lion, Rules for Living, This House (also

Chichester and West End), A Taste of Honey, Emil and the Detectives, Port and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (for which he received an Olivier Award) at the National Theatre; Company, True West, Heisenberg and The Nether in the West End; Hangmen at the Royal Court (also West End and New York); Fatherland at the Lyric Hammersmith and Royal Exchange Manchester; The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at West Yorkshire Playhouse; Junkyard at Bristol Old Vic; Fracked! at Chichester and on UK tour; Before I Leave at Cardiff; Before the Party, Uncle Vanya, Children’s Children and Mrs Klein at the Almeida; Love’s Sacrifice for the RSC; The River on Broadway; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, All My Sons and To Kill a Mockingbird at Regent’s Park; and The Machine in Manchester and New York.

Craig Leo

PUPPETRY DIRECTOR Craig Leo is a South African theatre designer, puppeteer and performing artist.

He trained in circus arts, performing with the Zip Zap Circus which led to a role in the Sun City Circus Extravaganza, Baletsatsi.

Collaborating with colleagues, he formed the acrobatic theatre company Myth, and toured Austria and Germany.

As performer and designer, he has worked with top South African theatre-makers including Magnet Theatre, Jazzart Dance Theatre, Mothertongue Project, Janni Younge Productions and Handspring Puppet Company. Productions include Medea, Bolero, Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints, Cargo, Partly God, The Flower of Shembe, I Turned Away and She Was Gone, City of Paradise, The Firebird and Womb of Fire, Heart of Redness, The Visit and Antigone.

His collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company includes Tall Horse, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse for William Kentridge, Franco Dragone’s House of the Dancing Water, Or You Could Kiss Me, Olifantland, and War Horse at the National Theatre and beyond.

He has continued his relationship with the National Theatre as Associate Director of Puppetry for War Horse.

As a performer his recent work includes Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: A Reimagining for Gyre and Gimble/ Shakespeare’s Globe.

Gwen Hales AERIAL DIRECTOR

TRAINING In 2018, Gwen Hales gained a

Masters degree in Circus Directing.

Previously an aerialist, street performer, fire-eater and clown, she has travelled the world performing with traditional and contemporary circuses. She now works as a freelance circus director, choreographer, and mentor, collaborating with circus and theatre companies and specialising in work that crosses the boundaries between skills and narrative.

THEATRE includes recently, as aerial director/ circus consultant, Peter Pan for Bristol Old Vic/National Theatre/Troubadour; The Borrowers for the Tobacco Factory; Angels in America at the National Theatre; Hetty Feather in the West End and on tour; and as co-founder/performer Flown by Pirates of the Carabina (winner of the Total Theatre Award for Physical Theatre).

Susanna Peretz WIGS, SFX, HAIR & MAKE-UP

THEATRE includes Noises Off at the Garrick Theatre; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Very Very Very Dark Matter and Julius Caesar at The Bridge; Hedda Tesman and Plenty at Chichester; Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic; Ghost Stories at the Lyric Hammersmith; Peter Pan at Regent’s Park; The Last Ship on UK tour; Pity, Prudes, Gun Dog, Girls and Boys, Road, How To Hold Your Breath, Linda, Birdland, The Nether, The Kid Stays In The Picture, Anatomy of a Suicide, The Twits, X and Hangmen (also West End) at the Royal Court; Don Juan in Soho and The Exorcist in the West End; Machinal, The Game, Mr Burns, Medea, The Treatment, Carmen Disruption, Mary Stuart (also West End), Oresteia (also Trafalgar Studios) and Hamlet (also West End) at the Almeida; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Old Vic; The Grinning Man at Bristol Old Vic/Trafalgar Studios; Wings at the Young Vic; Everybody’s Talking About Jamie in the West End; The Humans at BAM, NY; Bugsy Malone, Tipping the Velvet, City of Glass and Jubilee at the Lyric Hammersmith; The Way of the World, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Teddy Ferrara at the Donmar Warehouse; and Witness for the Prosecution at London Court House.

OPERA includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Aldeburgh Festival; Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are, Dark Mirror and Curlew River at the Barbican/US tour; The Illuminated Heart at Lincoln Centre NY; Greek for Scottish Opera/Festival Theatre, Edinburgh; and Rigoletto on Irish tour.

FILM & TV includes The Show, Electric Dreams, In The Dark Half, His Heavy Heart, Jimmy’s End, Showpieces and Skeletons (BAFTA Nominee and Michael Powell Award-winner).

THE LION, THE WITCH & THE WARDROBE PRODUC TION

OTHER WORK includes collaborations with Alan Moore on his comic book series Providence and the multimedia project As Big As the Sky with artist Ai Weiwei. Her work has also been exhibited at Sprueth Magers Art Gallery.

Sarah Fielding ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Sarah Fielding is a freelance circus and theatre director, and also co-director of the Invisible Circus. Directing credits for the company include The Happiness Machine (2012), The Last Waltz, a commission for Showzam at the Blackpool Winter Gardens (2013), and Under the Dark Moon, which played at Bristol Old Vic in 2014 and 2015.

She has run several projects with the Young Creatives at the Roundhouse, and completed a RYTDS placement at Bristol Old Vic in 2015-16, which included assisting Sally Cookson on Sleeping Beauty. She worked on a directing placement with Wildworks on Wolfs Child, and worked as associate director on The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse, in 2017. She ran SpaceCraft, an artist’s development programme exploring site-responsive performance, and has most recently been directing performances on Brunel’s ship SS Great Britain, and a production of Robin Hood with the Bristol Old Vic young company. She has performed with Duckie at the Barbican, Trash City at the Roundhouse, Carnesky’s Ghost Train in the Blackpool Winter Gardens and numerous shows with the Invisible Circus. She also plays with the band The CarnyVillains.

Tom Paris

Tempest for Birmingham Royal Ballet; Pelléas et Mélisande for Scottish Opera; Nightfall at The Bridge Theatre; and Girl from the North Country at the Old Vic/Public Theatre.

As assistant designer to Katrina Lindsay (Harry Potter & The Cursed Child), Rob Howell (Matilda, Ghost, Private Lives), Robert Jones (Kiss Me Kate, The Wizard of Oz), Bob Crowley (The Little Mermaid, Once), Hildegard Bechtler (Good People) and Miriam Buether (Sunny Afternoon). www.tomparis.co.uk

Jill Green CDG CASTING DIRECTOR

THEATRE includes, in the West End, Dear Evan Hansen, Touching The Void (also Bristol Old Vic and tour), War Horse (2015–2020; also tour), The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time (2015–19; also international tour), Kinky Boots (also UK and Ireland tour), Disney’s Aladdin, Jersey Boys (also UK and Ireland tours), Young Frankenstein, Beautiful – The Carole King Musical (also UK and Ireland tour), La Strada, Show Boat (also Crucible Sheffield), The Scottsboro Boys (UK Casting; also Young Vic), The Producers (and UK tours) and Fosse.

Also The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; The Lion King on tour 2015–16; Lazarus at King’s Cross Theatre and Jane Eyre on UK tour 2017 and at the National Theatre.

WORKSHOPS include recently Roman Holiday, What’s New Pussycat, Famous Five, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, Becoming Nancy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall (Workshops 2 and 3).

REVIVAL DESIGNER

THEATRE design includes Draw Me Close (also Young Vic) and All Kinds of Limbo at the National Theatre; Hansel & Gretel at Bergen National Opera; Summer in London at Theatre Royal Stratford East; Into the Woods at RADA; Gianni Schicci and Les Mamelles de Tirésias for RCS; Judy! at the Arts; West Side Story for RNCM; Bring it On: The Musical and Saxon Court at Southwark Playhouse; A Christmas Carol on UK tour; Alice at Salisbury Playhouse; Noye’s Fludde for Iford Arts/Salisbury Playhouse; Faust and Carmen for Winterbourne Opera; and Mack & Mabel at Greenwich Theatre.

He also designed the interactive exhibitions Enter Wonder.land & Costume at the National for the National Theatre.

As associate designer to Rae Smith: Wonder. land at the National Theatre/M.I.F./Châtelet; Cavalleria Rusticana & I Pagliacci at the Metropolitan Opera; The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse; The

Rachel Bown-Williams & Ruth Cooper-Brown OF RC-ANNIE LTD FIGHT DIRECTORS

UK’s leading Dramatic Violence Company.

THEATRE includes [BLANK] at the Donmar Warehouse; Macbeth, Hedda Tesman (with Headlong/The Lowry) and Plenty at Chichester; King John, Measure for Measure, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, Tartuffe, The Duchess of Malfi, Salome and Snow in Midsummer for the RSC; The King of Hell’s Palace at Hampstead; Peter Pan, Anna, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, Common, Ugly Lies the Bone, Peter Pan, The Threepenny Opera, The James Plays (co-production with National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival) and Cleansed at the National

Theatre; Troubadour at White City Theatre; Noises Off at the Lyric Hammersmith and West End; The Night of the Iguana, Emilia and True West in the West End; Wife at the Kiln; Hobson’s Choice at Manchester Royal Exchange; King Hedley and The Village at Theatre Royal Stratford East; Orpheus Descending, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Uncle Vanya, Insignificance, Jumpy, My People, All My Sons, Aristocrats and Salt, Root and Roe and A Chorus of Disapproval at Clwyd Theatr Cymru; All My Sons, A Monster Calls, Woyzeck and Wise Children (for Wise Children) at the Old Vic; Macbeth, Emilia, Othello, The Secret Theatre, Boudica, Lions and Tigers, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, The White Devil, Comus and Imogen at Shakespeare’s Globe; The Little Matchgirl at Bristol Old Vic / Shakespeare’s Globe; A Very, Very, Very Dark Matter at The Bridge; Company for Elliot & Harper in the West End; Europe at Leeds Playhouse; Close Quarters for Out of Joint / Sheffield Theatres; God of Carnage, The Price, Switzerland and Dusty at Theatre Royal Bath; Hogarth’s Progress and My Brilliant Friend at the Rose Kingston; Girl on a Train, Sunshine on Leith, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, Barnbow Canaries, Great Expectations and Richard III at Leeds Playhouse; and A Clockwork Orange at Liverpool Everyman.

Elliott & Harper Productions Elliott & Harper Productions was founded in 2016 by Marianne Elliott, Chris Harper and Nick Sidi.

Elliott & Harper’s London production of Company at the Gielgud Theatre won four Olivier Awards, including Best Musical Revival, as well at the Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical, and will transfer to Broadway in Spring 2020. Their other recent credits include the highly acclaimed co-production of Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic Theatre (directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell) which transferred to The Piccadilly Theatre in the West End in October 2019.

Elliott & Harper co-produced the Broadway transfer of the National Theatre’s production of Angels in America (Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play) directed

by Marianne Elliott. Other productions include Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle at Wyndham’s Theatre, directed by Marianne Elliott, and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe at Leeds Playhouse.

BELOW Nicky Cross BELOW LEFT Mei Mac

Leeds Playhouse Leeds Playhouse was established over 50 years ago; from 1970 to 1990 as Leeds Playhouse, then, with the opening of a new theatre on its current Quarry Hill site it became West Yorkshire Playhouse until reclaiming its original name in 2018. In 2019 the Playhouse underwent significant redevelopment following £15.8m of investment, including a new city-facing entrance, the addition of the Bramall Rock Void space and improved access to and around the theatre in its brand-new foyer spaces.

Leeds Playhouse is one of the UK’s leading producing theatres; a cultural hub, a place where people gather to tell and share stories and to engage in world class theatre. It makes work which is pioneering and relevant, seeking out the best companies and artists to create inspirational theatre in the heart of Yorkshire. From large-scale spectacle to intimate performance the Playhouse develops and makes work for our stages, for found spaces, for touring, for schools and community centres. We create work to entertain and inspire.

As dedicated collaborators, Leeds Playhouse works regularly with other organisations from across the UK, and some of the most distinctive, original voices in theatre today.

Through their Artistic Development programme Furnace, they develop work with established practitioners and find, nurture and support new voices. They cultivate artists by providing creative space for writers, directors, companies and individual theatre makers to refine their practice at any stage of their career.

The Playhouse’s sector-leading Creative Engagement team works with over 10,000 people aged 0 to 95 every year through a range of weekly workshops and exciting creative projects using theatre to open up possibilities, reaching out to refugee communities, young people, students, older people and people with learning disabilities.

At the Playhouse there is always a way to get involved.

Leeds Playhouse – Vital Theatre Artistic Director James Brining Executive Director Robin Hawkes Chairman of the Board Sir Rodney Brooke CBE

Find us on Facebook: Leeds Playhouse Follow us on Twitter: @LeedsPlayhouse Follow us on Instagram: @LeedsPlayhouse LeedsPlayhouse.org.uk

Leeds Theatre Trust Limited Charity Number 255460 VAT No. 545 4890 17 Company No. 926862, England Wales

Registered address Playhouse Square, Quarry Hill, Leeds, LS2 7UP

Catherine Schreiber

A Tony and Olivier Award-winning producer, Catherine Schreiber received the Broadway Global Producer of the Year Award in 2017.

Upcoming on Broadway, Lead Producer of Elliott and Harper’s Company and of the Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol. Currently Lead Producer on The Play that Goes Wrong Off-Broadway.

Recent Broadway productions include Network, Pretty Woman, Angels in America, and The Play That Goes Wrong. Chicago Shakespeare The King’s Speech Recent UK productions include Company, Heisenberg, The Life (Offie Winner), Gabriel and Persuasion. She is most proud of bringing The Scottsboro Boys to London.

Touring includes The Play That Goes Wrong and Fiddler on the Roof.

AWARDS & NOMINATIONS London Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard Awards and seven Olivier nominations for The Scottsboro Boys.

Tony Awards for Clybourne Park and Angels in America. Olivier Award for Company. Tony nominations include Fiddler on the Roof, The Scottsboro Boys, Next Fall and Peter and the Starcatcher. Olivier nominations include Dreamgirls, Show Boat, The Scottsboro Boys and People Places and Things. Key to the City Scottsboro, Alabama FILM Made in Kent documentary.