Sex with Strangers Programme

SEX WITH STRANGERS

BY LAURA EASON DIRECTED BY PETER DUBOIS

MAIN STAGE

WHAT’S ON FILTHY BUSINESS

BY RYAN CRAIG DIRECTED BY EDWARD HALL 10 MARCH – 22 APRIL

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

BY STEPHEN BROWN BASED ON THE MEMOIR BY RORY STEWART DIRECTED BY SIMON GODWIN 28 APRIL – 3 JUNE

GLORIA D OW N S TA I R S

BY BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS DIRECTED BY MICHAEL LONGHURST 15 JUNE – 22 JULY

E X PER I ENC E

BY DAVE FLOREZ DIRECTED BY TOM ATTENBOROUGH 20 JANUARY – 18 FEBRUARY

SC A R LE T T THE FESTIVAL

THE FESTIVAL

ON TOUR

BY COLETTE KANE DIRECTED BY MEL HILLYARD 23 FEBRUARY – 25 MARCH

SUNNY AFTERNOON

AT HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Panel discussions, workshops and performances celebrating theatre, film, literature and more 10 – 12 FEBRUARY

MUSIC & LYRICS BY RAY DAVIES BOOK BY JOE PENHALL ORIGINAL STORY BY RAY DAVIES DIRECTED BY EDWARD HALL sunnyafternoonthemusical.com

WELCOME During an autumn of three epic plays with large casts – Labyrinth, iHo, and Wild Honey – the theatre often felt at bursting point as two Main House and two Downstairs companies (two companies are always rehearsing whilst two companies are playing) jostled for use of the kettle or the microwave in our little Green Room… Indeed, Hampstead’s industriousness has now made the theatre a leading employer of acting talent: in every week of this 2016–17 financial year, including our dark period, we will have engaged an average of 19 actors.

If you include the Stage Management teams, we are employing nearly 25 Equity members every single week - so many, indeed, that they easily outnumber our permanent staff! So at this point in the cycle an intimate two-hander feels a welcome way to start the New Year, and Sex with Strangers is a complete contrast to everything that has gone before.

We are always keen to offer you the best new American drama, and Laura Eason is yet another representative of the brilliantly talented contemporary crop of American women playwrights. We have showcased some of them at Hampstead – Theresa Rebeck, Gina Gionfriddo, Rebecca Gilman – but there are many more. American Theatre produces an annual list of the most produced playwrights across the US, and whilst August Wilson headed the 2016/17 list, the most produced living playwright was a woman whose work is barely known in New York, still unseen in London, and who beat Arthur Miller into third place with an astonishing 16 productions! Indeed, of the twenty most produced writers, nine were living American men and six living American women, but the women were getting more productions per head than the men... If such a list existed for the UK I doubt it would read like this – and this is the more surprising because the American theatre industry is essentially amorphous because of its geographic disparity, and self-regulating because, as an industry, it receives no state support.

So it’s an absolute joy to be giving the first UK premiere of an Eason play, and a real pleasure to welcome back Peter Dubois, Artistic Director of the Huntington in Boston, to direct it. You’ll recall that Peter directed Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn for us in 2014. Here he has again teamed up with Emilia Fox, and the unstoppable Theo James - so sit back and enjoy some New Year fireworks!

EDWARD HALL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

THE WILL MORTIMER INTERVIEW WM You are originally a Chicago playwright, the American city with the most vibrant theatre life outside New York. Do you think Chicago playwrights are different from New York playwrights?

LE Yes. New York is a city of theatres that ‘produce’ work whilst Chicago is a city of ‘companies’. What happens a lot in Chicago is that young people come together and start companies and make their own work. It’s very affordable to find a little space and get some people together: you can make work, really figure out who you are, and have it fail and it won’t end your career. You can even get the Press to come: reviewers from the two big papers, the Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune, will come. They will even review the first production by a company of people just out of school. But in New York the theatre economics are different: it’s more competitive and there’s less infrastructure for experimentation.

The expected training trajectory in New York is that you go to school as an undergraduate, you do a little bit in the world, and then you go back to graduate school - and the experimentation you do, you do in school. You come out, hopefully one of the stars of your class at Yale or Brown, and then you’ll get a production at a major venue. I have friends in New York who’ve had the breakthrough production relatively shortly after school, but if it doesn’t go well, it can be years before you get another production. So it can be brutal.

Whereas in Chicago, most of the known playwrights didn’t go to graduate school. Tracey Letts, Bruce Norris… they’re actors who joined companies, started writing plays, and learnt through doing - as opposed to following a more traditional academic trajectory followed by being quickly put into the pipeline.

In New York there is also a tradition of ‘you have to pick your line’. It’s highly competitive, so you cannot be both an actor and a writer or a director and a writer.

You have to choose. Whereas in Chicago, everyone in my theatre company did at least two, if not three or four things. So there are designers who direct and writers who act… and the director/writer combination is very common. It’s a really different approach to theatre making, and one that leaves more room for development without the pressure of high profile production.

Finally, in terms of the work, there’s a lot of stylistic exploration in New York and a real celebration of

‘voice’ - of what a writer uniquely brings to the table in terms of style and structure - and I feel that is sometimes more of a priority than the content. There is an acceptance of ambiguity and of experimental exploration. Whereas in Chicago, I think the priority is ‘What is this play about? Why do we care?’. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t exciting work in Chicago, but, as a broad generalisation, I think Chicago plays can feel more ‘meat and potatoes’: ‘It’s very cold, why are you making me leave my house in January? You really had better have something to say to me.’

WM Tell me about Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago, of which you were Artistic Director.

LE Lookingglass is an Ensemble Company, and when I first started writing for them, I was writing original plays. But gradually the company started to focus more on producing adaptations: epic stories adapted from novels as opposed to work exploring life now...

I wrote adaptations (of Jules Verne and Edith Wharton amongst others) with the company, but I felt limited by that, which is part of what propelled me to move to New York and step away from being Artistic Director of a theatre company. That was a big decision: we had just opened a beautiful new theatre, the company was fifteen years old, we had an amazing reputation and we were really becoming a Chicago institution. So to walk away from that kind of stability to jump off a cliff and go to New York was a little crazy. But it was driven by the desire to get back to writing plays in my own voice.

WM OK, so, off the cliff... talk to me about how you came to write Sex with Strangers LE When I moved to New York, I didn’t have an agent and I didn’t know anybody. We lived in a tiny place in Brooklyn Heights which had an extraordinary view: out of one window we could see the statue of Liberty and out of the other, if you craned your neck, you could see the Brooklyn Bridge. So I could see these icons of New York City, which was both very inspiring and incredibly intimidating. I had a feeling of ‘I think I have something to contribute to the larger cultural conversation, but nobody knows I am here’. So the feeling that Olivia has in Sex with Strangers of ‘will my voice be heard?’ is something I was feeling very strongly. That was

THE HAMPSTEAD THEATRE LITERARY MANAGER TALKS TO THE WRITER

LAURA EASON combined with the other part of me that was getting an agent, getting contacts, getting connections with playwrights, prioritising the theatres I should submit to – all the hustling, hitting the pavement and cold calling that is needed to get a play produced. That is the entrepreneurial approach that Ethan exhibits in the play. And these two parts of me were having a conversation and out of that the play was born.

I was in my thirties when I moved to New York, and the age difference in the play is important to me because in America we think of success as a young person’s game. Olivia is only thirty-eight in the play but she says ‘if it hasn’t happened, maybe it’s not going to happen…’.

WM Where did the print versus digital dialectic come from?

LE When I started writing the play in 2008, relatively soon after the introduction of the smartphone, the question of if one was going to engage with technology in a minute-to-minute way was very current. And Facebook was just emerging then. As the play evolved to its world premiere in 2011 and then to a re-write I did for Sydney Theatre Company in 2012, it no longer was ‘if’, it became ‘how’. ‘What is your relationship going to be with your technology?’ and how we are utilising it to get what we want - the pitfalls and the benefits, because both most certainly exist.

I was also interested in the duality of who you seem to be online versus who you are in real life.

LAURA EASON & PETER DUBOIS

As a dramatist you think a lot about character, and about the construction of identity as you are building a character. But now everybody is constructing character in their lives via their online personae. So there are questions of identity that we are all navigating that are new and evolving, and I found that both evocative and very interesting. Looking at the characters in the play, the thing that helps Olivia break through and move towards the success that she’s yearned for is also the thing that is trapping Ethan in his persona, in the skin that he desperately wants to shed.

WM It is a very neatly structured play; was that hard to write?

LE Well, as a challenge to myself I wanted to write something rich and exciting and explore questions I really want to ask, but on a manageable scale… I knew how to write a twelve-handed adaptation with circus tricks and eighty-seven costume changes, but could I write a compelling piece of work with just two people on stage and with one set? It was a big challenge. In the first draft, the play all took place in what is now the location of the first act. Then I realised that I needed to open it up and we got the second location.

WM And it has two great roles for actors...

You’re an actress. Were they fun to write?

LE So much fun! And I often act out as I am writing, just to make sure it’s feeling right and ‘actable’.

WM Your actor’s instinct must have been incredibly helpful...

LE Absolutely. And I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a number of productions since and to really be able to ‘vet’ the moments and be deeply ‘in it’ with the actors, and so continue to fine-tune the text. I strive to root out the moments that arrive too early or are a little too clever, and to focus on making it feel real and honest.

WM So you are still making changes to the script now?

LE There are very small things we are doing, losing a little bit of language here and there where I don’t feel that we need it, but they’re really small tweaks. I also feel that whilst I’m here, we should take advantage of that. This is the Peter DuBois production for

Hampstead Theatre, and as long as the story-points are clear, if Theo wants to drop two words or Emilia has a preference for two lines to be swapped for a particular moment, and we’ve talked it through, I think that’s really exciting. It helps the actors take ownership of what we are doing and it helps make this production a completely unique experience. That’s one of the beautiful things we get to do in the theatre.

WM Of course… But you also write for television – you are one of the writers (and a producer) on House of Cards. How is that different from playwriting?

LE It is very different! I am not the ‘Show Runner’ - the head writer who makes final decisions. So, two things about it are very different: firstly, it is much more like adaptation than it is like writing an original play: you are bringing your full self and all your ideas to the table, but you have to write a script that is in the voice and tone of the show. It’s like adapting a novel, where you want to capture the voice of the book but wherever you invent new material the aim is for it to mesh seamlessly with the original. The other difference is about collaboration, and House of Cards is incredibly collaborative. We are at the table eight hours a day, five days a week, for eight months - with the exception of two weeks when you step out to write episodes. We are working together, pitching ideas and working out stories. When I am writing a play I am alone in my room. When I am ready to share my work, other voices enter in and it’s at my discretion how much I listen.

Whereas on House of Cards, every day you pitch an idea, someone responds, you build on that and ultimately the Show Runner enters the conversation.

They review what you’ve worked on, and it can all get thrown out or get revised, and then you pick that up and move forward. So your approach and your relationship with the material is completely different.

WM It does seem - at the moment - like there is this extraordinary crop of female playwrights in America, of whom you are one. What do you put that down to?

LE A lot of the bigger theatres now have second stages that are nurturing young writers and giving more opportunity to a variety of voices, including more female playwrights. And there are great female role models already established: Susan Lori Parks, Lynn Nottage, Annie Baker, Sarah Ruhl... I could go on and

on. There still isn’t parity, but there’s been a lively public conversation on the subject, people are making an extra effort, and it’s helping. The work was always there. It was just that people needed to decide to give women writers a read.

WM So do you think that writers’ support mechanisms are really good in the United States? It does seem that there are a lot of programmes, and there seems to be money as well.

LE I was part of the playwrights’ Lab at Women’s Project Theater, which was very helpful, and New Georges, a company with a development programme, helped incubate my first New York play. They also hooked me up with a director who had their own company which ended up producing it. So those two theatres in particular were instrumental in my getting a foothold in New York. Whilst it’s hard to get a production in New York – it’s so expensive - a lot of theatres have reading series and development money to help people get started and develop relationships.

There are a lot of ways to get to know a theatre.

Unfortunately, the downside of that is that a number of playwrights end up feeling that they are trapped in a development loop. But at least there are many places that are specifically dedicated to nurturing the writer.

WM Are you working on anything at present?

LE I am writing another play. I have a commission for Second Stage in New York who produced Sex with Strangers. I was in a rock band in Chicago for five years and I have already written two plays that are set in the 1990s Rock scene, which is an era I love.

They are the first two plays of a trilogy: the first is called Rewind, which is about the life of a band, and the second is called The Undeniable Sound of Right Now, which was produced by Rattlestick Theatre in New York about a year and a half ago. The third in the trilogy will be called Girl Band and it is basically about the extremely complicated experience of female friendship…

WM Yes, you are a singer songwriter and a bass player... Is the discipline of writing and performing music totally different from writing plays – do they ‘talk to’ one another?

LE They are very different things because playing music is so collaborative. Being in a band is more like production than writing – it’s bringing the elements of live performance together for the public. And there is an immediacy to music that I love. It’s so different from spending months alone writing a play, then getting everybody’s notes, then rewriting, workshopping, rewriting again… Even though I don’t play in public anymore I still have my guitar in my office. So I can take a break and pick up the guitar and I can be in a song instantly – because music happens in the moment. Just playing for myself is a real pleasure – and I think it even helps my writing.

WM Finally, who are the playwrights you love who are your heroes?

LE Oh, Pinter is big for me... and Chekhov is a real touchstone. And then, at the other extreme there's Caryl Churchill, who I feel is so willing to follow the idea… Structure, style and language unfold from the core idea in her work in a way that I think is just extraordinary. And the breadth and scope of the work is unbelievable…

WM But two of those people are British and none of them is American!

LE (Laughs) Yes, sure... Well, Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar is one of the first plays I saw as a young adult, and it set my brain on fire and is still one of my favourite plays. And I was very deeply influenced by writer/adaptor/director Mary Zimmerman, who is a Lookingglass member and is a mentor to me. I was an actor in all of her early work, and she leads from such a place of passion and intuition… From her I learned that it’s not just about structure or about experimentation… but that there always needs to be a ‘burning centre’, a real personal investment that is essential if you are going to do good work.

THE ‘DEEP READING’ BRAIN:

THE CHALLENGES POSED BY A DIGITAL MILIEU

BY MARYANNE WOLF Will we lose the ‘deep reading’ brain in a digital culture?

No one knows – yet.

The preceding sentences provide a legitimate synopsis of this essay. They also exemplify the kind of reductionistic Twitter-like reading that concerns me greatly, both for expert adult readers and even more so for young novice readers, who must learn to read so as to comprehend, analyze, evaluate, and sometimes generate new thoughts about the complexity of the information given. For that is what a deep reading

rather than simply decoded it. For him, only the intellectually effortful process of probing, analyzing and internalizing knowledge would enable the young to develop a lifelong, personal approach to knowing and thinking, which could lead them to their ultimate goals – wisdom and virtue. Only the examined word – and the examined life – were worth pursuing. Literacy, Socrates believed, would short-circuit both.

Within a 21st century context where we use Google and other external servers to retrieve most of our information, the operative word is ‘short-circuited.’

‘THE CHALLENGES SURROUNDING HOW WE LEARN TO THINK ABOUT WHAT WE READ RAISE PROFOUND QUESTIONS FOR A SOCIETY’ brain does: reads, infers, analyzes, understands, and upon occasion, goes somewhere new.

The challenges surrounding how we learn to think about what we read raise profound questions for a society. They have implications for us intellectually, to be sure, but also socially and ethically. Whether an immersion in digitally dominated forms of reading will change the capacity to think deeply, reflectively and in an intellectually autonomous manner is a question that should be fundamental for a democratic society.

But it isn’t one that any of us can answer easily yet.

And, though this question will never be reducible to which medium best supports reading, writing and thinking, understanding how mediums change us is essential to confront.

In my work on the evolution of the reading brain during the past two decades, I have found important insights from the history of literacy, cognitive neuroscience, and literature that help to examine this set of issues. The historical moment that best approximates the present transition from a literate to a digital culture is found in the ancient Greeks’ transition from an oral culture to a literacy-based culture.

Socrates, who was arguably Greece’s most eloquent apologist for an oral culture, protested against the acquisition of literacy. And he did so on the basis of questions that are prescient today – and surprising.

Socrates contended that the seeming permanence of the printed word would delude the young into thinking they had accessed the crux of knowledge,

I use it to segue into a different, yet concrete way of conceptualizing Socrates’s worries. Modern imaging technology allows us to scan the brains of expert and novice readers and observe how human brains learn to read. Briefly, here is what we find: Whenever we learn something new, the brain forms a new circuit that connects some of the brain’s original structures in new ways. In the case of learning to read, the brain builds connections between and among the visual, language, emotional, and cognitive areas that are part of our genetic heritage, but that were never woven together in this way before. The reading circuit that emerged was indeed something new and may well be one of the most important cognitive breakthroughs the species ever achieved.

Technological breakthroughs in brain imaging allow us to appreciate the stunning complexity that is involved in the expert reader’s brain circuit. For example, when reading even a single word, we use an extraordinary panoply of areas across all four lobes, both hemispheres, and five layers of our brain.

During the first milliseconds of the reading circuit, that are largely devoted to decoding, the word’s visual information becomes connected to all that we know about the word from its sounds to meanings to syntactic functions. The virtual automaticity of this first set of stages allows us in the next milliseconds to go beyond the decoded text. It is within the next critical milliseconds that we enter a cognitive space where we can connect the decoded information to

all that we know and feel. In this latter part of the process of reading, we are given the ability to think new thoughts of our own: the generative core of the reading process. As current neuroimaging instructs us, the generation of such insights activates regions from everywhere across the brain.

Knowing where insights occur is important to appreciating the basis of the neurological complexity involved in deep reading, but novelists tell us something equally - if not more -important about what goes on in those last milliseconds of the reading

beginning of ours.’ A bit more than a century later, the writer Peter Dimock said that ‘[this] kind of reading, then, is a time of internal solitary consciousness in which the reading consciousness is brought up to the level of the knowledge of the author – the farthest point another mind has reached...’

The act of going beyond the text to analyze, infer and think new thoughts is the product of years of formation. It takes time, both in milliseconds and years, and effort to learn to read with deep, expanding comprehension and to execute all these processes as

‘THERE IS NO GENETIC GUARANTEE THAT ANY INDIVIDUAL NOVICE READER WILL EVER FORM THE EXPERT READING BRAIN CIRCUITRY THAT MOST OF US HAVE ATTAINED’ brain. Perhaps no one better captured what the reader begins to think in those moments than the French novelist Marcel Proust. He characterized the heart of reading as that moment when ‘that which is the end of [the author’s] wisdom appears to us as but the

an adult expert reader. When it comes to building this reading circuit in a brain that has no preprogrammed setup for it, however, there is no genetic guarantee that any individual novice reader will ever form the expert reading brain circuitry that most of us have attained.

EMILIA FOX & THEO JAMES

Because there is no one reading circuit set down by our genetic heritage, how we read – and what we absorb from our reading – will be influenced by both the content of our reading and the medium we use.

The more time we spend on any given medium, the more the reading circuit will reflect the particular characteristics or affordances of that medium. In this sense, the reading circuit’s very plasticity is also its Achilles’ heel. It can be fully fashioned over time and fully implemented when we read, or it can be short-circuited – either early on in its formation period or later, after its formation, in the execution of only part of its potentially available cognitive resources.

Understanding the specific effects of the dominant

alerts, is literally and physiologically distracted from focusing attention long enough to concentrate and deploy critical analytical processes, or learn them.

The second is whether the young digital reader can learn to over-ride these distractions and acquire deep reading, alongside other 21st century skills.

A parallel question is whether expert and novice readers will simply choose to handle the glut of information and distractions by reducing them to their lowest conceptual denominator. Sound bites, text bites, and mind bites are one reflection of a culture that has become too distracted by the next piece of new information to allow itself time to think. Literally and physiologically.

‘THE READING CIRCUIT’S VERY PLASTICITY IS ALSO ITS ACHILLES’ HEEL. IT CAN BE FULLY FASHIONED OVER TIME AND FULLY IMPLEMENTED WHEN WE READ, OR IT CAN BE SHORT-CIRCUITED ’ medium’s characteristics (i.e., print and screen-based mediums) and of the reader’s formation will be key to what happens to the future generations of reader.

Few need to be reminded of the transformative advantages of the digital culture’s democratization of information in our society. That is not the issue I address here. Rather, in my research, I seek to understand the full implications for the reader who is immersed in a reading medium that provides little incentive to use the full panoply of cognitive resources available.

We know a great deal about the present iteration of the reading brain and all of the resources it has learned to bring to the act of reading. However, we still know too little about the digital reading brain.

My major worry is that, confronted with a glut of immediate information that requires and receives less and less intellectual effort, many new (and many older) readers will have neither the time nor the motivation to think through the possible layers of meaning in what they read. The omnipresence of multiple distractions for attention, combined with the brain’s own natural (reflex-based) attraction to novelty, contribute to a mindset toward screen reading, particularly on the internet, that is prone to being distracted, rather than focusing its attention. My first question concerns the young: whether the novice digital reader, bombarded by novel stimuli ranging from hyper- links to email

As I was writing this piece, a New York Times reporter contacted me to find out whether I thought Internet reading might aid speed reading. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but speed and its counterpart – assumed efficiency – are not always desirable for deep thought.’

We need to understand the value of what we may be losing when we skim text so rapidly that we skip the invaluable last milliseconds of reading, where we might reach our own important insights. Ultimately these questions, which require our most rigorous research, are not about mediums. They are about how we think. We need to know the kind of readers we are becoming and what we hope for the next generation.

Our failure to do this may leave us confronted with a situation that technology visionary Edward Tenner described a decade earlier in the transition to our present culture: ‘It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it.’ The future, any future, requires all of our intelligence.

Maryanne Wolf directs the Center for Reading and Language Research and is the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University in Boston. She is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (HarperCollins), Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century, (Oxford University Press), and the upcoming, Letters to the Good Reader: The Future of the Reading Brain in a Digital Culture. An early version of this essay was published in Nieman Reports, 2010.

EMILIA FOX

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

BY ALEKS KROTOSKI

Identity is a complex and multifaceted construct that, when considered within a binary, digital environment, is divided into two constituent and occasionally conflicting parts: the collection of information that relates to a single entity (digital identity) and the representation of the self-identity in the digital space (online identity).

- Identity and Agency, from the International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society (2015) Who do you think you are online? It’s likely you only know the half of it. You are a collection of your name and everything you do under it - from status updates on social networking sites to blogposts to online shopping lists to comments at the bottom

people think are developing are actually important for the people’s evolving psychological self-awareness, and for our understanding of where we as a society are today.

Think about a teenager you know or the teenager you were. Teenagers decorate their walls with blatant signals of who they are. And the poster of the celebrity that was there yesterday may not be there today; we’re constantly changing creatures who try on and take off selves throughout our lives.

In the mid-1990s, when the web was mostly populated by freaks and geeks and academics, it was described by MIT professor Sherry Turkle as an identity laboratory: a place where ‘me’s were formed,

‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ONLINE? IT’S LIKELY YOU ONLY KNOW THE HALF OF IT’ of newspaper articles to the photos you post and the videos you upload. You’re also the things not associated with your public profile, like what you write on sites where you don’t have to log in, or the paths you trace across the web as the invisible cookies for each site feed back where you were and where you went next. Most of that is jumbled into a single digital identity that can be traced back to you, offline. And that’s usually where the privacy debates begin. But that’s just the half of it.

Your psychological identity is the person you feel you are or could be. It’s the lessons you’ve learned, the mistakes you’ve made, the things you’re proud of and the stuff that defines you. It’s what you ate for breakfast and the pop song you played thirty times in a row. It’s your first status updates from five years ago and the one you posted this morning. And putting these little pieces of you online - warts and all - is changing the world.

The printing press inspired the Enlightenment because it gave a platform for people outside the traditional power structures to record their lives and to reflect on how they changed as time passed. But the process was expensive and literacy and other basic skills were essential, not to mention access to one of the new-fangled machines. Now, everyone has access to a printing press, plus a place to play audio and show off videos, so it’s very likely that the web will give rise to new kinds of personal and social enlightenment. The narcissistic tendencies that

tried on like a pair of jeans, and then discarded if they didn’t fit. Now, things are a little different.

We can all thank Facebook for the modern web: if it wasn’t for the world’s most popular social network, neither your mother nor your uncle, nor your grandmother or your cat would have joined the online revolution. Facebook gave people who didn’t trust their computers the confidence to log in, even if it was just to spy on their kids. And why? Because Facebook provides enough information that the person on the other side of the screen is actually who they say they are.

But this comes at a price, and not a particularly hidden one: everything that’s done on Facebook - and increasingly across the Web - is consolidated into the company’s servers on a single digital identity.

This is nothing new; most web services do this, usually to personalise what you see online. Most people have ignored or put up with this, although there has been the occasional privacy furore when information uploaded in one context ends up in a recruiter’s in-tray, a journalist’s inbox or in a hotel room in Hong Kong. The amount of potential and actual surveillance is unprecedented; but the danger isn’t only in the collection of the material, but what happens to it after. If, for example, an enthusiastic business analyst, social scientist, security officer or government employee assumes that the data that’s online actually represents the whole person, they’re missing out a rather large piece of pie: the stuff that’s

not recorded by a database. Human beings are made up of more than binary ones and zeros.

And if an HR person looks at the photos of that ridiculous party you were at in college that you uploaded to Facebook and thinks you’re the same person now that you were then, we’ve got a serious social problem.

In the spring of 1996, an enterprising American college student named Jennifer Ringley connected a webcam to her computer and began seven years of uninterrupted self-exposure. JenniCAM, as she eventually named it, was the first no-holds-barred lifelogging experiment on the world wide web. Every 15 seconds, the webcam uploaded another still

worldly it’s innocent’. Now, we have stories headed: ‘Facebook’s ‘dark side’: study finds link to socially aggressive narcissism.’

Public displays of the self haven’t disappeared into the history of the network as embarrassing experiments in self-promotion – our mass migration online has only encouraged them. We flood the web with personal information: status updates, personal opinions, intentions, pictures and videos. Twenty years after Ringley turned her camera on, we now tell our Facebook friends when we’re single or engaged or hungover and hate our jobs at a rate of 30 billion updates a month. We tell people when we’re out of the house and what we’ve bought, practically begging

‘EVERYTHING THAT’S DONE ON FACEBOOK IS CONSOLIDATED INTO THE COMPANY’S SERVERS ON A SINGLE DIGITAL IDENTITY’ image – from the mundane to the erotic – exposing the uncensored life of a young woman coming of age.

The web at the time of JenniCAM was still in its infancy: this was before Google made it navigable, before the dotcom bubble began to inflate, and before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was out of short trousers. Compared with the modern world of universal broadband access, instant feedback and streaming video, it was achingly slow: websites with pictures took entire minutes to download, and publishing anything required expert knowledge in at least one computer language.

JenniCAM represented our self-aware future, the place we inhabit in the second decade of the 21st century, now that 82% of American adults use the web, and the average amount of time we spend online doubles every five years. We are in an era when 800 million people from around the world peek into real lives via YouTube every month to watch the more than 72 hours of video we upload every second. We have evolved into the people that JenniCAM represented: both the voyeur and the viewed, playing with what we perceive to be our audience’s notions of who we are.

The controversy over Ringley’s brash experiment is mirrored by the headlines we read almost two decades later about the effects of online life. Then, the Wall Street Journal described Ringley as a narcissist fantasist, while the LA Times called JenniCAM ‘so straightforward it’s warped, so simple it’s complex, so humbling it’s audacious, so plain it’s creative, so

people to steal our stuff. We post private phone numbers in public places, tell anyone what we had for breakfast and share secrets about our friends with the rest of the world. Is the online population stuck in an infantile culture of attention seeking? Does the web give us an entirely new opportunity to steal, stalk and seduce, as we lay bare our whereabouts, feelings and interests for public consumption? Or are we now in the ultimate identity laboratory: a place where we can redefine who we are, who we were, and who we might become?

Life is a series of graduations, from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and onwards. In each, we do things that are part of those life beats. If you were held accountable by someone offline for something you as a 30 year old did as a toddler, you’d be affronted. Yet as we continue to weave ourselves into the web and the digital versions of ourselves are delivered in a single lump by a search engine, then the distinctions between who we are now and the mistakes we’ve survived will evaporate. If this continues to be the norm, as it is now, we’ll be too afraid to try new things in case it comes back to bite us in a future version of ourselves.

Some of this content originally appeared in Untangling the Web: What the Internet Is Doing To You (Faber, 2013).

Dr Aleks Krotoski is a social psychologist and broadcaster.

PETER DUBOIS EMILIA FOX & THEO JAMES

EMILIA FOX & THEO JAMES THEO JAMES

OSNAT KOBLENZ, EMILIA FOX, THEO JAMES & PETER DUBOIS THEO JAMES

EMILIA FOX

LAURA EASON

PETER DUBOIS

Laura Eason is a Brooklyn-based playwright, screenwriter and musical book writer. Selected productions of her twenty produced plays include: Sex With Strangers (more than thirty productions in the US and internationally, including Second Stage, NYC; Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago; Geffen Playhouse, LA; Sydney Theatre, AU; Blackwing Productions, Buenos Aires, Argentina; published by Overlook Press and DPS); The Undeniable Sound of Right Now (Rattlestick Theatre and Women’s Project Theatre, NYC; published by DPS); The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Hartford Stage, CT; New Victory, NYC; People’s Light, PA; Actor’s Theatre, KY; KC Rep; St. Louis Rep; Denver Center; published by DPS) and Around the World in 80 Days (St. James Theatre, London; New Vic and Royal Exchange, UK; Lookingglass Theatre, Chicago; Baltimore Centerstage; published by BPPI and Nick Hern Books).

She wrote the book for the musicals Days Like Today, music and lyrics by Alan Schmuckler (Writers Theatre, Chicago) and Summerland, music by Jenny Giering, lyrics by Sean Barry (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre commission).

As a screenwriter, Laura is a writer/producer on the Netflix drama, House of Cards (WGA nomination for outstanding writing in a drama series, Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Drama Series for seasons two, three and four) and is currently developing her own TV drama series. Her feature film debut commences filming in 2017, produced by and starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Laura is an Ensemble Member and the former Artistic Director of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre (2011 Regional Tony Award). In New York, she is a member of Rising Phoenix Rep, the Dramatists Guild, New Georges, and is a Women’s Project Playwright’s Lab alumna.

More information available at lauraeason.com

Peter DuBois is the Artistic Director at the Huntington Theatre Company (2013 Regional Theatre Tony Award) where his directing work includes Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and A Little Night Music with Haydn Gwynne; the world premieres of Lydia R. Diamond’s Smart People; Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet (2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist); Bob Glaudini’s Vengeance is the Lord’s and David Grimm’s The Miracle at Naples; the regional premieres of Stephen Belber’s The Power of Duff; Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw and Rapture, Blister, Burn and Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss.

His West End/London work includes Rapture, Blister, Burn with Emilia Fox (Hampstead Theatre); All New People with Zach Braff (Duke of York’s) and Becky Shaw with Haydn Gwynne (Almeida).

His New York work includes The Power of Duff with Greg Kinnear (New York Stage and Film/Powerhouse Theater); the premiere of Rapture, Blister, Burn (Playwrights Horizons, 2013 Pulitzer Prize Finalist); Sons of the Prophet with Joanna Gleason and Santino Fontana (Roundabout Theatre Company); Modern Terrorism; Becky Shaw and Trust with Sutton Foster and Bobby Cannavale; All New People and Lips Together, Teeth Apart with America Ferrera (Second Stage Theatre); Measure for Pleasure with Michael Stuhlbarg and Suzanne Bertish; Richard III with Peter Dinklage and Ty Burrell; Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? and Biro (The Public Theater/NYSF); Jack Goes Boating with Philip Seymour Hoffman and The View from 151st Street (LAByrinth Theater Company/ The Public Theater).

Regional US and UK work includes productions at American Conservatory Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, Humana Festival of New Plays, Manchester Opera House, and King’s Theater Glasgow. Before arriving at the Huntington, he served for five years as associate producer and resident director at The Public Theater, preceded by five years as artistic director of the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska.

Prior to his work at Perseverance, Mr. DuBois lived and worked in the Czech Republic where he co-founded Asylum, a multi-national squat theatre in Prague.

His productions have been on the annual top ten lists of The New York Times, Time Out, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Newsday, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Evening Standard, The Boston Globe, and The Improper Bostonian, and he received an Honorable Mention for 2013 Bostonian of the Year by The Boston Globe Magazine.

WRITER

DIRECTOR

CAST OLIVIA

EMILIA FOX

ETHAN

THEO JAMES

CREATIVE TEAM WRITER

LAURA EASON

DIRECTOR

PETER DUBOIS

DESIGNER

JONATHAN FENSOM

LIGHTING DESIGNER

NATASHA CHIVERS

SOUND DESIGNER

MAX PAPPENHEIM DANIELE LYDON

DIALECT COACH CASTING DIRECTORS

SUZANNE CROWLEY AND GILLY POOLE

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

CARLA KINGHAM

PRODUCTION MANAGER

GARY PELL

COSTUME SUPERVISOR

LORRAINE EBDON-PRICE MICHAEL DENNIS

COMPANY STAGE MANAGER DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER

OSNAT KOBLENZ

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER

SEAN EDWARDS MANUEL HARLAN

REHEARSAL PHOTOGRAPHER WARDROBE MANAGER SET BUILDERS

NICKY MARTIN-HARPER MATTHEW JACQUES WORKSHOP

HAMPSTEAD THEATRE WOULD LIKE TO THANK SHOREDITCH MACS SARAH PITT-WOOLL MARK NEWMAN

FOR EXCLUSIVE INFORMATION, NEWS & COMPETITIONS @Hamps_Theatre #HTStrangers

Image photography SHAUN WEBB

MAKE UP PROVIDED BY

hampsteadtheatre

CAST & CREATIVE TEAM EMILIA FOX OLIVIA Recent theatre work includes Rapture, Blister, Burn (Hampstead Theatre); Coriolanus and Richard II (both Almeida); Good (Donmar); Katherine Howard (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Cherry Orchard (RSC/Albery); Heartbreak House (Oxford Playhouse) and Look Back in Anger (Old Fire Station, Oxford).

Film work includes Mum’s List; The Carer; Suspension of Disbelief; A Thousand Kisses Deep; Ways to Live Forever; Dorian Gray; Flashbacks of a Fool; Cashback; Keeping Mum; The Tiger and the Snow; Things to Do Before You’re 30; The Republic of Love; Three Blind Mice; The Soul Keeper and The Pianist.

Television work includes Delicious; Home From Home; The Tunnel; Casual Vacancy; The Wrong Mans; Silent Witness (Series 8 to 20); The Secrets; Falcon (2 episodes); Upstairs Downstairs; Merlin (Semi Regular); The Queen; Consuming Passion; The Game’s Up; Ballet Shoes; Fallen Angel; Born Equal; Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Moving Finger; The Virgin Queen; Gunpowder, Treason and Plot; Henry VIII; Helen of Troy; Coupling (2 episodes); Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased); Bad Blood; The Wrong Side of Rainbow; Other People’s Children; The Scarlet Pimpernel; Shooting the Past; Verdict: The Doctor’s Opinion; The Round Tower; Blink (Short); The Temptation of Franz Schubert; Bright Hair; Rebecca and Pride and Prejudice.

THEO JAMES ETHAN James trained at Bristol Old Vic. Film work includes The Divergent Series opposite Shailene Woodley and Kate Winslet. Other film work includes War on Everyone; The Benefactor; The InBetweeners Movie and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

Television film includes Golden Boy; Downton Abbey and Bedlam.

Upcoming films due for release include The Secret Scripture and Backstabbing for Beginners.

JONATHAN FENSOM DESIGNER Theatre work includes Farinelli and the King (Duke of York’s - Olivier Award nominations for Set design and Costume design); Rapture, Blister, Burn; Raving; In the Club and Abigail’s Party (all Hampstead Theatre); Journey’s End (West End/Broadway/UK tour - Tony Award Nomination for Best Scenic Design); Clybourne Park (Mercury Theatre, Colchester/UK tour); The Herbal Bed (Royal and Derngate, Northampton - UK Theatre Award 2016): The Lyons (Menier Chocolate Factory); The Accrington Pals (Royal Exchange, Manchester - UK Theatre Award 2013); Our Boys; Rain Man and Some Girls (all West End); Canvas (Chichester Festival Theatre); Becky Shaw; The Homecoming and Big White Fog (all Almeida); Six Degrees of Separation and National Anthems (both Old Vic); Happy Now?; The Mentalists and Burn/Citizenship/Chatroom (all National Theatre); The Sugar Syndrome (Royal Court); Duck and Talking to Terrorists (both Out of Joint/Royal Court/UK tour); Jeffery Bernard Is Unwell (Theatre Royal Bath/UK tour); Swan Lake (San Francisco Ballet); The American Plan and Pygmalion (both New York); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Canada – Shakespeare Festival); Blackbird (UK tour); Smaller (West End/UK tour) and God of Hell (Donmar).

Work for Shakespeare’s Globe includes The Tempest; Pericles; Measure for Measure; King John; Farinelli and The King; The Changeling; The Duchess of Malfi; Julius Caesar; Gabriel; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Globe Mysteries; Henry V; Hamlet; Henry IV Part 1 and Henry IV Part 2; King Lear and Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Jonathan was Associate Designer on Disney’s The Lion King, which premiered at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway and has subsequently opened worldwide.

and Statement of Regret (both National Theatre); Gravity Fatigue (Sadler’s Wells); Strapless and Electric Counterpoint (both Royal Opera House); Fireworks; Adler & Gibb; The Mistress Contract; Gastronauts and The Djinns of Eidgah (all Royal Court); Mesmerics and Metheus (both BalletBoyz theTALENT/Linbury ROH); 1984 (Headlong/Almeida/West End/tour); Macbeth (National Theatre of Scotland/Broadway/Tokyo/Japan Tour); Green Snake (National Theatre of China); Praxis Makes Perfect (Neon Neon/National Theatre Wales); The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning (National Theatre Wales); 27; The Wheel; Mary Stuart; The House of Bernard Alba and Home (Glasgow) (all National Theatre of Scotland); The Wolves in the Walls (National Theatre of Scotland/Improbable) and That Face (Royal Court).

Most recent television work includes the series Babs, airing later this year.

Her awards include a Theatre Award UK for Happy Days at Sheffield Crucible (Best Design), an Olivier

Award for Sunday in the Park with George (Best Lighting Design) and a Theatre Critics of Wales Award for Praxis Makes Perfect (Best Lighting).

MAX PAPPENHEIM SOUND DESIGNER Theatre work includes The Children (Royal Court); Labyrinth (Hampstead Theatre); Ophelias Zimmer (Schaubühne, Berlin/Royal Court); Sheppey; Blue/ Heart; Little Light and The Distance (all Orange Tree, Richmond); The Gaul (Hull Truck); Toast (Park Theatre and 59E59 Theatres, New York); Jane Wenham (Out of Joint); Waiting for Godot (Sheffield Crucible); My Eyes Went Dark (Traverse, Edinburgh); Cargo (Arcola); CommonWealth (Almeida); A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (Print Room); Wink (Theatre503); Fabric and Invincible (both National tours); Spamalot; The Glass Menagerie and Strangers on a Train (all English

NATASHA CHIVERS LIGHTING DESIGNER Most recent lighting design work includes Void and Fire (Royal Ballet); Annie Get Your Gun and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (both Sheffield Crucible) and Oresteia (Almeida/West End - 2016 Oliver Award Nomination).

Other stage work includes Sunset at Villa Thalia

EMILIA FOX & THEO JAMES

Theatre, Frankfurt); Kiki’s Delivery Service; Johnny Got His Gun; Three Sisters; Fiji Land and Our Ajax (all Southwark Playhouse); Mrs Lowry and Son (Trafalgar Studios); Martine; Black Jesus; Somersaults and The Fear of Breathing (all Finborough); The Faction’s Rep Season 2015 (New Diorama Theatre); Shopera: Carmen (Royal Opera House) and The Hotel Plays (Langham Hotel).

Work as associate Sound Designer includes The Island (Young Vic) and Fleabag (Soho).

Radio work includes Home Front.

DANIELE LYDON DIALECT COACH Daniele trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama.

Theatre work includes School of Rock (West End); The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC); Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Sonia Friedman Productions); Hotel; Here Lies Love; The Motherf**ker with the Hat; Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Medea; Man and Superman and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (all National Theatre); John (DV8); Juno and the Paycock (Liverpool Everyman); Blue Heart Afternoon (Hampstead Downstairs); Chalet Lines and Kitchen Sink (both Bush) and Jumpers for Goalposts (Paines Plough).

Work as Resident Dialect Coach includes Billy Elliot (West End/tour).

Film work includes Star Wars: Episode VIII; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; Salt and Fire and A United Kingdom.

Television work includes Poldark; An Inspector Calls; Dark Angel and The Paradise.

SUZANNE CROWLEY & GILLY POOLE CASTING DIRECTORS

Indies; Two Trains Running; The Piano Lesson; A Love Song for Ulster; The Stephen Lawrence Enquiry; The Nuremberg Trials; Bloody Sunday and The Hutton Enquiry (all Tricycle); Ruined; Reasons To Be Pretty; Becky Shaw and The Doctor’s Dilemma (all Almeida).

Film work includes Urban Hymn; The Walker; Titanic; Conspiracy; A Knight’s Tale; Tomorrow La Scala; Redtails and Bhaji on the Beach.

Television work includes The White Princess; The Durrells (2 series); Partners in Crime; The Ark; The White Queen; Spooks (7 series); Outnumbered (5 series); The Sculptress; Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee; Indian Summers (2 series); New Worlds; Not Only But Always; Whitechapel; The Last Weekend; Case Sensitive; Nicholas Nickleby; Kingdom; Trollied; Generation Kill (Emmy nomination); Hunted; Episodes; Five Days and Tsunami: The Aftermath.

CARLA KINGHAM ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Recent theatre work as Director includes After the Heat We Battle for the Heart (VAULT Festival); Lotty’s War (UK tour); Bi (Rich Mix Cultural Foundation); Tracey (White Bear Theatre) and No Border (Theatre503/ Oxford Playhouse commissioned for further development by the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton).

Forthcoming theatre work includes You’re Human Like the Rest of Them (Finborough); SEAFRET (Old Red Lion) and a new musical for Edinburgh Fringe 2017.

Carla is Associate Director on Les Misérables (Wermland Opera House, Sweden).

She is also an affiliate of Theatre503 and works extensively as a youth and community director for organisations including The Young Vic, Hoxton Hall, and Artsdepot.

Recent work at Hampstead Theatre includes Labyrinth; Lawrence After Arabia; Reasons to be Happy; Rabbit Hole; Matchbox Theatre; Wonderland; Sunny Afternoon; Drawing the Line; Rapture, Blister, Burn; Chariots of Fire; No Naughty Bits; Enlightenment; .45; Beasts and Beauties and Tiger Country.

Other theatre work includes Journey’s End (Duke of York's); Twelfth Night (Albery); Broken Glass (Tricycle/ West End); The Great Game; Women, Power and Politics; Not Black and White; Playboy of the West

THEO JAMES & EMILIA FOX

THE HISTORY OF HAMPSTEAD THEATRE Hampstead Theatre was founded in 1959 by James Roose Evans and was initially based in a church hall in Hampstead Village. New plays formed the core of the repertory from the very beginning and the first season included successful premieres of Pinter’s The Room and The Dumb Waiter. In 1962 the theatre moved to the 157 seat prefabricated building at Swiss Cottage which was to be its home for over 40 years. The programme mix was much the same as it is now: occasional revivals (a 1963 production of Private Lives doing much to restore Noel Coward’s reputation) supporting a diverse repertory of new plays and UK premieres of American work.

During its first decade, the theatre existed without any subsidy, making it dependent on Box Office revenue, philanthropic support and revenue from transfers. Accordingly, the diverse range of Hampstead’s work developed a particular character, with intellectual challenge balanced by a significant entertainment component. This contrasted with the work of its near contemporary institution, The Royal Court, where greater financial support granted greater license for experiment. The institutions have both remained true to their heritages and Hampstead’s always close relationship with the commercial theatre has led to a surprisingly high number of West End transfers and tours.

Once established, Hampstead supported the careers of a number of notable writers. Three plays by David Hare (including his first play, Slag) premiered here; there were premieres of three plays by Michael Frayn, four plays by Mike Leigh (including Abigail’s Party), two plays by Terry Johnson, five plays by Philip Ridley, two plays by Stephen Jeffreys, and the return of Harold Pinter with the premiere of The Hothouse. Alongside these there were UK premieres of plays by Tennessee Williams (one also a World premiere), three Frank McGuinness plays, four Brian Friel plays, and plays by Athol Fugard, David Mamet and Tony Kushner. Other notable world premieres included Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man and Dennis Potter’s only play Sufficient Carbohydrate.

Inevitably this repertory attracted some of the finest creative and acting talent available. Amongst others the tiny Hampstead stage attracted artists as diverse as Ian McKellen, Leonard Rossiter, Jude Law, Zoe Wanamaker,

Faye Dunaway, Ian Holm, Susan Hampshire, Albert Finney, Eileen Atkins, Ewan McGregor, Harriet Walter, Alan Rickman, Nigel Hawthorne, Elaine Stritch, Frances de la Tour, John Hurt, Penelope Keith, Billie Whitelaw, John Malkovich, Sheila Hancock, David Suchet, Juliet Stephenson, Timothy Spall, Maureen Lipman and many others.

In 2003, with the prefab becoming increasingly dilapidated, a National Lottery grant and the generosity of the local community enabled Hampstead to create its current state-of-the-Art premises. But adjustment to this new home proved unexpectedly difficult both financially and artistically: the much loved but tatty old auditorium was less than half the size of the luxurious new Main House. Accordingly, a very different approach to play selection and production was required, and the early years proved challenging.

In 2010 a comprehensive rethink of the business model was initiated, reducing overhead, investing more money onstage, and starting to present professional productions in the downstairs Studio for the first time.

The new model rapidly yielded results and notable recent successes have included World premieres of four Howard Brenton plays including 55 Days, Drawing the Line and #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, David Hare’s The Moderate Soprano, Mike Bartlett’s adaptation of Chariots of Fire and his Wild, Beth Steel’s Wonderland and Labyrinth – as well as Hampstead’s first large scale musical, Sunny Afternoon. UK premieres of American plays have included David Mamet’s Race, Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, David Lindsay Abaire’s Good People and Rabbit Hole and Tony Kushner’s iHo. There have been revivals of plays by Stoppard, Frayn, Hare and Terry Johnson. And Hampstead Downstairs has, since 2010, given World premieres to over 40 plays (many of which have gone on to other stages) whilst Hampstead has transferred eight of its Main Stage productions to the West End. Whilst now operating an unique commercial/funded model at a scale and prominence unimaginable in those early days in the church hall, Hampstead Theatre continues to honour its early creative values, as well as respecting the rich heritage that it has created in the course of its 50-year history.

For more archive photos, please visit our History wall in the lower foyer of the theatre.

Zoë Wanamaker & David Haig, Dead Funny, 1994 | Emma Fielding & Emilia Fox, Rapture, Blister, Burn, 2014 | Rowan Atkinson, Beyond A Joke, 1978

Annette Badland & Imelda Staunton, Slavs!, 1994 | Nigel Hawthorne, Uncle Vanya, 1979 Jude Law, The Fastest Clock in the Universe, 1992

BE A PATRON Building on its rich history, Hampstead Theatre is renowned for original, entertaining and ambitious work. We aim to move theatre forward with new ideas, talent and energy to excite our audiences with the lateral, the fresh and the unexpected. Sell-out hits, West End transfers and Olivier Awardwinning triumphs originate with us and will continue to do so thanks to philanthropic support.

Our Patrons’ contribution is vital, and in turn they enjoy a range of benefits which bring them closer to the Theatre they love. These include very popular pre-show receptions and post-show discussions with the cast for every production on our two stages, complimentary tickets and programmes, and backstage tours.

For more information about being a Patron please contact the Development team on 020 7449 4155, development@hampsteadtheatre.com or visit hampsteadtheatre.com/support-us

WILD HONEY by Michael Frayn, from the play without a name by Anton Chekhov

PATRONS & SUPPORTERS INDIVIDUALS Creative Benefactors Anonymous Celia & Edward Atkin CBE Kurt & Paivi Björklund Martin Byman & Peggy Samson Sir Trevor & Lady Chinn Lin & Ken Craig Barbara & Mick Davis Simon & Claire Godwin Andrew & Marina Newington Simon & Midge Palley Maarten & Taina Slendebroek Katja & Nicolai Tangen Mary Ellen & Tom Wanty Mattias Westman Standing Ovation Celia & Edward Atkin CBE Alexander Graham James Sellar Encore Sir Trevor & Lady Chinn The John S Cohen Foundation Alessandra & Anthony Gutman Ros & Alan Haigh Selina & David Marks David Tyler & Margaret Fingerhut Opening Night Jocelyn Abbey & Tom Carney Tania Black Russ & Linda Carr The George Colman Charitable Trust Dr Natalie Greenwold Madeleine Hodgkin Lady Rayne Sue & Tony Rosner David Sigall Roland & Sarah Turnill Preview 1001 Nights Productions Ltd Heather Acton Saleem & Tallat Ahmed Bob Ainscow Anonymous Kay & Jim Ashton Liz & Mark Astaire Lucy Astor Eric & Jean Beecham

Charitable Trust Pauline & Brian Binstock Katie Bradford Dorothy & John Brook Andrea & Christopher Brown Jules & Cheryl Burns Paul & Rachel Campbell Lord & Lady Carlile Paul & Fiona Cartwright Richard & Robin Chapman M Cohen & E Bell Dr John L Collins &

Mrs Isabel C H Collins Ion Dagtoglou & Deborah Colman David Dutton Estates & Agency Holdings Limited Jane Featherstone Michael Frayn Jackie & Michael Gee Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Lynda Gratton Pamela, Lady Harlech Sir Michael & Lady Heller Hollick Family Charitable Trust Zmira & Rodney Hornstein John Hyatt Andrew & Elizabeth Jeffreys Adam Jones

Jean-Charles & Luce Julien Ralph & Patricia Kanter Dr Costas Kaplanis Ian & Deborah Kelson Nicola Kerr Janet Langdon Melvin & Jackie Lawson Wilson & Mabel Lee J Leon Charitable Fund Karen & Lawrence Lever Caroline Macdonald &

David Simmons Alan Maclean Alexandra Marks & Steven Barnett Julia & Julian Markson Philip Marsden Mark & Cassy Martell Catherine & Garry Monaghan Roísín Monaghan Diana & Allan Morgenthau Mr & Mrs Andrew Morris Ellie & Philip Olmer Alison & Simon Parry-Wingfield Ian & Karen Paul Helen Payne & Matthew Greenburgh Penny & Richard Peskin Michael & Livia Prior Bob, Gail & Ian Reichert Kathleen Roberts James & Lydia Rouse Sir David & Lady Scholey Bhags Sharma Janice & Philip Silvert Margo & Nicholas Snowman OBE Estelle Spottiswoode Josi & Alan Steinfeld QC William & NanDee Stockler Peter Tausig Tobyn & Sam Thomas Marina Vaizey Carole & David Warren Simon & Charlotte Warshaw Hilda & Marc Worth Dress Rehearsal Anonymous Pauline & Daniel Auerbach Alice Avis Graham & Michelle Barber Maggie Barnes Lisa & Andrew Barnett Ian Bell Ben-Levi Family Rosamund Bernays The Beryls Neil & Debra Blair Miriam & Richard Borchard Rene Branton-Saran Mrs Suzanne Brown Catharine Browne Steven & Miriam Bruck Barry & Deborah Buzan The Cheruby Trust Maureen Clark-Darby Lord & Lady Collins of Mapesbury Mr & Mrs Leigh Collins Katie Cooper David Cottam Derek Councell & Jenny Dover Allan & Sylvia Cowen Georgina & Bernie David Mark Dennis QC &

Christabel Dennis Kate Donaghy Nicky Douglas Andrew & Aurore Down Robyn Durie Johanna Ehrnrooth Judith Farbey & Prabhat Vaze Paul & Françoise Findlay Gail & Michael Flesch

Sue Fletcher Jane & Nigel Franklin Dr Emma Friedman & Mr Kevin Gold Gillian Frumkin Eleni Gill Catherine & Roy Goode Michael Green Nick & Fiona Green Elaine & Peter Hallgarten Mark Hamsher & Elna Jacobs Florence & Neil Hasson Sara Holmes-Woodhead Mary Holness Chris Hopson &

Charlotte Gascoigne Ronnie Harris Gillian & Barry Howard Doris Hugh Dr June Huntington Alan & Louise Jacobs Dr Alison Jones Annabel Karmel MBE Alex & Grace Kay Nina Kaye & Timothy Nathan Richard & Susan Keller James & Sasha Kennedy John & Angela Kessler Edna Kissmann Yvette & Roger Kutchinsky Anne & Brian Lapping The Lees Family Rose & Dudley Leigh Tania & Olivier Levenfiche Roger & Vivien Lewis Claire Livingstone Alison & Michael Lurie Alan & Jennifer MacKay Frederic Marguerre Nick & Sophie Marple Jessica Mathur Amanda May Isabelle Mee Dianne & Martin Mendoza Patricia & Richard Millett Lara Mindenhall Clive Mishon Elizabeth & Ashley Mitchell Geoffrey Mitchell Gilles & Bénédicte Moec David & Sandy Montague Nicholas Murphy Jonathan Mussellwhite &

Daphne Walker Hilary Page & Michael Rosenberg Julia Palca & Nick Stevenson Parkheath Franchising Deborah & Clive Parritt Jonathan Pfitzner Mrs Kirsten Poler Jane & Nick Prentice Susannah Price Kate Rankine Mike Redferne Donald Rogers Anthony & Lizzie Rosenfelder Bob & Pippa Rothenberg David Rothenberg Marion Rubens The Rubin Foundation Elizabeth Selzer Barry Serjent Sophie & David Shalit Chris & Maria Sharp Mrs Lois Sieff OBE Lucy & Jonathan Silver Brian Smith Josh & Vivienne Spoerri Victoria Stark The Starr Family Anthony & Jacqueline Todd Claire Tremeer

Nick Viner & Victoria Boyarsky Dr Donna Vinter Carla Wakefield Gerry Wakelin Rob & Laura Wallace Christopher Walsh Sophie & Stephen Warshaw Carole & Denis Waxman Dr Adrian Whiteson OBE &

Mrs Myrna Whiteson MBE Francoise Winton Richard & Susan Wolff David & Vivienne Woolf Katherine Wood Mrs Karen Yerburgh George & Moira Yip Joanne & Nick Young Michael & Michaela Zelouf

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS Bennetts Associates Berry Bros. & Rudd Linklaters Nyman Libson Paul Sublime Universal Ltd

TRUSTS AND FOUNDATIONS The Chapman Charitable Trust The London Community Foundation &

Cockayne – Grants for the Arts The Dorset Foundation Hedley Foundation The Rose Foundation The Rothenberg Family* Sir Siegmund Warburg’s

Voluntary Settlement The Tsukanov Family Foundation *Access Programme

HAMPSTEAD DOWNSTAIRS The Andor Charitable Trust Anonymous The John S Cohen Foundation Clore Duffield Foundation Fenton Arts Trust The Garrick Charitable Trust The Golsoncott Foundation Mr & Mrs V Meyer MishMosh Media Edith and Ferdinand Porjes

Charitable Trust The Royal Victoria Hall Foundation The Sackler Trust The Vandervell Foundation

HAMPSTEAD THEATRE LITERARY FUND Adèle Bennett Legacy The Estate of Margaret Lowy The Estates of Peter Anthony Lund

and David Gavin Lund In Memory of Henry & Esther Rudolf The Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation

HAMPSTEAD STAFF DIRECTORS Susie Boyt Alexander Graham James Harding Adam Jones Dan Marks Simon Parry-Wingfield Karen Paul Jeremy Sandelson Meera Syal Katja Tangen David Tyler (Chair) Debbie Wosskow

Head of Finance

ADVISORY COUNCIL Dame Jenny Abramsky DBE Sir Michael Codron CBE Michael Frayn Daniel Peltz Peter Phillips OBE Paul Rayden Patricia Rothman

LITERARY

DEVELOPMENT BOARD Tania Black Karen Paul (Chair) Simon Parry-Wingfield Susan Schoenfeld Harrington Nicholas Snowman OBE Christopher Spray Katja Tangen Peggy Vance Debbie Wosskow

Becky Paris*

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Edward Hall* EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Greg Ripley-Duggan* ADMINISTRATION Director of Operations and Associate Producer Neil Morris* Production Co-ordinator Lottie Bedlow* Assistant Production Co-ordinator Amelia Cherry*

Ashok Shah Finance Officer Sherry Lau* DEVELOPMENT Director of Development Cathy Baker* Development Manager Sally Wilson* Development Manager Jonathan Mace*

Literary Manager/ Line Producer Will Mortimer* MARKETING Marketing Director Jess Woodward* Marketing Manager Marketing Assistant Lucie Blockley* Press Jo Allan PR 0207 520 9392 Programme Editor Pascale Giudicelli Design SWD www.swd.uk.com PRODUCTION Technical Director Simon Godfrey* Head of Lighting and Sound Matthew Coombes* Deputy Head of Lighting and Sound Emily Holmden* Head of Stage Fran Johnson* Deputy Head of Stage Nick Aldrich*

BOX OFFICE Head of Sales Joanne Boniface* Deputy Head of Sales and Access Manager Hannah Gill* Box Office Assistants Rik Baker Matt Barker Catherine Carnegie Pippa Davies Edith Furlong Adam Line Kirsty Osmon FRONT OF HOUSE AND EVENTS Front of House Manager, Bars and Catering Rob Coughlan* Catering Manager Cristรณbal Pizarro Duty Managers Matt Barker Jon Cobb Kati Donlon Edith Furlong Lanna Joffrey Lois Mackie Bar Duty Managers Laurel Cummins Lorna Hall Andrew Jardine Lois Mackie Simon Rodda Rosie Rowell William Sebag-Montefiore Hugh Stubbins Front of House Staff Angie Abramovitch Bolaji Alakija Rik Baker Ester Balint Esther Bisola Charlie Burt Geraldine Caulfield Caspar Cech-Lucas Ashton Charge Grace Chilton Calvin Crawley Thomas Crowhurst

Laurel Cummins Geraldine Curtis Lily Donnelly Rosie Dwyer James Easey Isabella Evans Daniel Fernandez Holly Gibbs Lauren Gibson Michael Gilbert Andrea Golinucci Christine Gomes Maria Goretti Cabrera Sam Harding Catriona Hawkins Joe James Aliou Janha Sean Matthew Jones Stella Kailides Martin Karadzhov Bel Knight Blake Kubena Mauricia Lewis Max Loble Alice Morgan Adam Parkinson Callan Purcell Ben Fox Smith Jane Staiano Marlow Stainfield Jessica Sykes Colm Tracey Madeline Young Head Cleaner William Dike Cleaners Dennis Adu-Gyamfi Samuel Gyamfi *Full time employees

All information and images printed in the Hampstead Sex with Strangers Programme are the property of Hampstead Theatre.

Edward Hall image HELEN MAYBANKS Wild Honey production photography JOHAN PERSSON

Nyman Libson Paul is a proud supporter of Hampstead Theatre and its Productions

HHHH HHHH Telegraph

Independent

Chartered Accountants Specialist advisors to the theatre industry Regina House 124 Finchley Road London NW3 5JS

A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

Please contact Paul Taiano or Anthony Pins

Directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones

t: 020 7433 2400 www.nlpca.co.uk

14 Feb → 18 Mar 2017

HHHH HHHH Evening Standard

#11520 NLP Hampstead Theatre 106mm x 69mm Advert.indd 1

Time Out

03/10/2016 17:55

Three flatmates. A single bathroom.

And a whole world of men.

The new auditorium at Storyhouse in Chester by architects Bennetts Associates will host its first plays in May 2017. Photo ©Mark Carline.

Lovers (6) © Jarek Puczel

Registered to carry on audit work and regulated for a range of investment business activities by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

A co-production with Out of Joint

16 FEB – 25 MAR

Low Level Panic CLARE McINTYRE

by Nina Raine

BY

Director Chelsea Walker Cast Sophie Melville, Katherine Pearce, Samantha Pearl

A game of love and law

The Dorfman Partner

orangetreetheatre.co.uk 020 8940 3633 Richmond Overground | District Line | National Rail

From 28 March

1 Rawstorne Place, London EC1V 7NL +44 (0)20 7520 3300 3 Boroughloch Square, Edinburgh EH8 9NJ +44 (0)131 667 7351 Amazon House, 3 Brazil Street, Manchester M1 3PJ +44 (0)161 674 0135

2016_4_half page_horizontal.indd 1

OT17-LLP-Hampstead ad106X69.indd 1

11/01/2017 11:46

www.bennettsassociates.com 17/11/2016 10:36:05

THE BESTSELLING NOVEL AND ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED FILM NOW ADAPTED FOR THE STAGE A THEATRE ROYAL STRATFORD EAST and ABBEY THEATRE, DUBLIN co-production, in association with NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND and COVENT GARDEN PRODUCTIONS

Adapted for the stage

by Emma Donoghue Music and Lyrics by Cora Bissett and Kathryn Joseph

2 MAY – 3 JUN 2017

#RoomThePlay

TICKETS £12-£26

STRATFORDEAST.COM 020 8534 0310

VAT No. 233 3120 59 Charity No. 233801 Reg No. 556251. Photography by Scott Rylander

HHHHH “LOVELY, WITTY, DELICIOUS” The Independent

HHHH

“RESTORES YOUR FAITH IN HUMAN NATURE” Telegraph

BY RICHARD MARSH & KATIE BONNA

HHHH

“LAUGHS ARE FREQUENT, UNSIGNALLED & BRILLIANT”

18 JAN -18 MAR

artstheatrewestend.co.uk

DIRTYGREATLOVESTORY.CO.UK  @ D I R T Y G R E AT L O V E |  / D I R T Y G R E AT L O V E | # D I R T Y G R E AT L O V E S T O RY

Reviews from original production

The Times