The 2023 graduate productions season is comprised of contemporary adaptations and new writing by playwrights including Meredydd Barker, Torben Betts, Philip Breen and Steve Marmion.
We are pleased to be joined by a team of renowned directors including Philip Breen, Blanche McIntyre, Steve Marmion and Ishwar Maharaj.
Performed by graduating actors across our full-time courses at The Playground Theatre, W10 6RQ.
Inconvenience
Written by Meredydd Barker and directed by Jonathan Kemp. Performed by graduating actors from the PG Dip/MA in Professional Acting.
“The past. A compilation tape from the kid who fancied you in Year 8. All chewed up in a thick red walkman. original case, headphones missing. Ten pounds to you.”
From dawn to dusk the hustlers of a small town on the edge haggle over the artefacts of their lives at the weekly car boot sale. Remnants of fresh and promising relationships, worn and worn out, are put on display in a new play by Meredydd Barker. Debts are paid, truths are uncovered, and a wedding dress is given one final moment in the sunshine.
Nobody Wants to Kill You
An adaptation of Dürrenmatt’s The Visit by Torben Betts, directed by Sue Dunderdale. Performed by graduating actors from the PG Dip/MA in Professional Acting.
“Water under the bridge, you say? Well, I’ve forgotten nothing. And now I want accounts between us settled.”
Claire is coming home and is now a fabulously rich woman. The townsfolk hope that her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but for one of them, prosperity comes at a high price and their debt must be settled.
Directed by Sue Dunderdale and based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s revenge play, The Visit, this new adaptation by Torben Betts explores mortality and morality. How far are people prepared to go to have the life they want?
Surely nobody wants to kill to get what they want?
Tartuffe
Written by Molière, adapted by Michael Fry and directed by Ishwar Maharaj. Performed by graduating actors from the BA (Hons) in Professional Acting.
A once happy family has become divided. Can the pious Tartuffe bring back harmony? Head of the family, Orgon, certainly believes so. But has he been hypnotised by a seductive and sanctimonious liar?
A house fraught with scepticism, hypocrisy and betrayal. Elaborate plots must be hatched to expose the truth.
Is Tartuffe a paragon of perfection or perversion?
This devilishly slick new adaptation of Moliere’s classic from Michael Fry is directed by Ishwar Maharaj – it would be a sin to miss it!
Black Snow
Adapted and directed by Phillip Breen. Performed by graduating actors from the BA (Hons) in Professional Acting.
Thursday 29 June 19:30
Friday 30 June 19:30
Saturday 1 July 15:00 & 19:30
Running time: 90 minutes
Cursed with an overactive imagination, vivid self-awareness and rapacious egomania, hypochondriac and fantasist, Maxudov has finished his novel.
But the censor will never pass it and no one wants to print it.
Or so he’s told until someone offers him four roubles a page and an eager theatre producer invites him to adapt it for the stage. But script changes must be made, and artistic licence can be cutting at times.
Set in Soviet Russia, Black Snow is a quick-witted, hilarious stark exploration into how dreams of literary success can quickly spiral into a dystopian nightmare.
Crime and Punishment
Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, adapted by Phillip Breen and directed by Blanche McIntyre. Performed by graduating actors from the BA (Hons) in Professional Acting.
“Only now do I understand the torments you must have been through”.
Raskolnikov is exceptional.
The only problem is no one seems to notice. The ex-law student sits in his flat day after day, anxious, isolated and angry – disillusioned with life, struggling to find fulfilment.
Brooding obsessively on a murderous scheme he’s hatched to solve his family hardship; he plots the execution of his neighbour – an elderly pawnbroker. Raskolnikov can claim the right to transgress societal norms because, of course, he is exceptional and it’s time people took notice.
Can he go through with it? And should he go through with it?
Directed by DSL alumna, and award-winning director, Blanche McIntyre, this ambitious new adaptation by RSC’s Phillip Breen brings Dostoevsky’s classic novel to the stage in an exciting fast-paced production.
Dorian Gray
Dorian Gray, an adaptation by Steve Marmion, directed by Emma Lucia Hands, performed by graduating actors from the MFA in Professional Acting with Independent Production.
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”
Set against the backdrop of Victorian High Society, Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with his newly painted portrait. In efforts to remain forever young, Dorian embarks on a Faustian pact – but at what devastating cost?
This thrilling new adaptation by Steve Marmion explores the obsessive cult of Youth exposed through the glittering imagery and wit of Wilde. There is no place for compassion and true love when you are a slave at the alter of Beauty.
Directed by Emma Lucia Hands, Director of Drama Studio London.
The Mulliners of Hollywood
An adaptation by Steve Marmion, directed by Rupert Hands, performed by graduating actors from the MFA in Professional Acting with Independent Production.
“Either you marry me in the gorilla’s cage, or you don’t marry me at all.”
Welcome to Angler’s Rest, the watering hole of 1920s Hollywood’s greatest stars.
Here you can discover what happened when a man came face to face with a child-snatching gorilla, find out if an obsequious ‘nodder’ ever becomes a resolute hero and if the elite of Hollywood’s studios smuggle contraband alcohol in time for the party of the century.
An eclectic bunch of cocktail themed raconteurs, led by Mr Mulliner, hot scotch and lemon in hand, tell us outlandish tales of romance and heartbreak, rising underdogs and missed opportunities.
Rupert Hands directs Steve Marmion’s roaring adaptation of PG Wodehouse’s classic novel in an ensemble-led comedy.