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YOU by Mark Wilson

Tuesday 13 February 2018

YOU by Mark Wilson

“You still have the clothes, don’t you; the ones they let you keep? Still in that drawer in the upstairs room, and the piece of faded blue card with his birth-weight and the time – blue for a boy.” 

VAULT Festival (The Pit), The Vaults, Leake Street, SE1 7NN

Wednesday 14 – Sunday 18 February 2018, 19:45 (Sunday Matinee, 16:45)

Longsight Theatre presents the award-winning YOU, a powerful play about adoption, by BBC Radio 4 writer Mark Wilson. YOU stars Kathryn O’Reilly (Our Country’s Good for Out of Joint, ITV’s Lewis, BBC One’s Call The Midwife) and Stephen Myott-Meadows (Hoax: My Lonely Heart for the Manchester Royal Exchange, Channel 4’s Hollyoaks) and is directed by Sarah Meadows (Where Do Little Birds Go?, Mr Incredible).

This ‘monumental play’ (Fringe Guru) was first performed by Longsight Theatre at the Brighton Fringe Festival in May 2015, where it won the Brighton Festival Award for Theatre, the Argus Angel Award for Artistic Excellence and Fringe Review Outstanding Theatre Award.

Kathleen sits anxiously waiting for the arrival of a man whom she had given up for adoption thirty years before and who has now traced her. Years spent insulating herself from the pain of separation and loss fall away as she begins to recall the events, the relationships and conversations – both imagined and real – with a clarity that brings each of her story’s characters to life.

Mark Wilson’s YOU is a stark exploration of the hopeless exhausting rage of rejection, self-acceptance, love and forgiveness. The play encapsulates all the raw and complex emotions of the players in an adoption narrative, giving a powerful insight into how complicated and painful it can be for all involved.

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Writer Mark Wilson comments, ‘Looking back now I see YOU, just perhaps, as having come from a need to hear my own mother, hear her story; a need to conjure her as a way of managing the loss I realised I was feeling. It would have been so obvious for me to have told the adopted person’s story. That was my experience after all. But from the beginning it was her story that started to be told.  Her voice. I think, too, there was an overwhelming need to forgive or self-accept… there’s no blame; no ‘goodies and baddies’. It’s simply peopled by characters trying to do their best which, I think, is what most of us, knowingly or otherwise, wake up each morning intending to do. So, yes, it’s about adoption, definitely, and for me it’s also much more.’

Both writer and director are adopted, and Sarah Meadows continues, ‘This play gives both Mark and I as adoptees and theatre makers the opportunity to communicate the complex reality of adoption; to reach out to the adoption community but to also start a conversation universally about how we publicly understand and talk about it’.

Longsight Theatre makes award-winning, brave, intimate theatre with a focus on new writing.

Details

Title                                                       YOU

Performance Dates                                  Wednesday 14 – Sunday 18 February 2018

19:45 (Sunday Matinee 16:45)

Running time                                         1 hour

Location                                                 VAULT Festival (The Pit), The Vaults, Leake Street, SE1 7NN

www.vaultfestival.com

How to get there                             Exit Waterloo Station via Exit Two onto Waterloo Road. Walk towards the Old Vic and turn right onto Bayliss Road. Take the second right on to Lower Marsh. Turn right down into the Leake Street tunnel.

Box Office                                           Tickets are available priced £14.50 (2 for 1 Offers Available)

Available from VAULT Festival Box Office and vaultfestival.com/whats-on/you/

Twitter                                                @YOUtheplay, @LongsightTC, @VAULTFestival #YOUtheplay

Website                                               www.longsighttheatre.com/you

Trailer                                                  Watch the trailer here

Notes                                                   Contains some adult themes

Writer                                                  Mark Wilson

Director                                               Sarah Meadows

Cast                                                     Kathryn O’Reilly & Stephen Myott-Meadows

Composer                                            Benedict Taylor

Design                                                 Catherine Morgan

Lighting Design                                   Jamie Platt

Producer                                              Rosalyn Newbery

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson is a writer and visual artist. His radio credits include Talk and the monologue version of You for BBC Radio 4. His most recent theatre credits include Brief Encounter, winner of the “Diez Minutos” Theatre Festival in San Miguel Di Allende, Mexico, and the stage version of You, winner of the 2015 Brighton Festival Award for Theatre, the Fringe Review Outstanding Theatre Award and the Argus Angel Five-Star Award. Mark is a writer for Longsight Theatre.

Sarah Meadows

Sarah is an award‐winning director and was recently nominated for an Off-West End Award for Best Director for Screwed by Kathryn O’Reilly at Theatre 503 and has worked across the UK, Europe and the USA. Recent credits include: The Fear of Fear by Stephanie Ridings, Warwick Arts Theatre; Alkaline by Stephanie Martin, The Park Theatre; Assistant Director, The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard, director Stephen Unwin,  UK tour (including  Cambridge Arts Theatre, The Rose Kingston, Bath Theatre Royal); Summer in London, by Rikki Beadle Blair, Theatre Royal Stratford East; The Texas Tax Man (musical comedy), Luke Courtier, The Arcola, VAULT Festival, RADA festival; PIG, Tim Luscombe, The Vaults, Waterloo; Where Do Little Birds Go? by Camilla Whitehill, Old Red Lion, UK tour, VAULT Festival & Edinburgh Festival, Underbelly;  Ile La Wa by Tolu Agbelusi & Apples & Snakes, UK Tour; Screwed by Kathryn O’Reilly, Theatre 503; The Very Perry Show (comedy) by Kate Perry, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Summer 2016;); Mr Incredible by Camilla Whitehill, VAULT Festival & Edinburgh Festival.

Kathryn O’Reilly

Kathryn trained at LAMDA.

Theatre includes; BLANK (Lakeside Theatre), Arms and the Man (Watford Palace Theatre), Allotments (Optik Theatre), A View From Islington North (Out of Joint/Arts Theatre), Our Country’s Good (Out of Joint/Octagon Theatre Bolton /St James Theatre/Guthrie Theatre Minneapolis & Royal Alexander Toronto), Caught (Arcola), In The Fog (Optik Theatre), Andersen’s English (Out of Joint/Hampstead Theatre), Mixed up North (Out of Joint/Octagon Theatre Bolton, Wilton’s Music Hall), Hamlet is dead. no gravity (Arcola), RIFT (Brewhouse Theatre), The Golden Dragon (ATC, The Drum Theatre Royal Plymouth), A Christmas Carol (Horla, Trafalgar Studios), Rumplestiltskin and Other Grizzly Tales (Wimbledon Studio), Stilettos in the Key of G, Love on the Tracks (Redbridge, Soho Theatre Studio), Oedipus (AOD national tour).

TV includes; Call The Midwife (BBC), Holby City (BBC), Doctors (BBC), Lewis (ITV), The Bill (Talkback Thames), Rough Justice (Hewland International), The Watcher (UFA Fiction).

Film; Random (BAFTA award winning film, Channel4/Hillbilly Films), Cold Calling (Woolfcub Films, winner Best Comedy Indie Short Film Competition), Klink Klank Echoes (DameTK Productions/Gilrei). Feature Film; The Little Stranger (Potboiler Films), Zebra Crossing (Crown Films, Audience Award Raindance Festival & Raindance Award British Independent Film Awards), Halal Harry (21st February Films).

Stephen Myott-Meadows

Stephen trained at Salford and is an award-winning actor, writer and is co-artistic director of the multi award-winning Longsight Theatre. Theatre includes; Old Vic Theatre, Bush Theatre, Theatre 503, Pleasance, Park Theatre, Off West-End Award Nominated Heist, Contact, Bolton Octagon, Library Theatre, Arcola, Edinburgh Brighton and Vault festival. Television includes; Hollyoaks, Massive, Life on Mars, Emmerdale. Film includes; Aux (evolutionary films) alongside John Rhys Davies.

All enquiries, high-res images and further information:

Rosalyn Newbery

E: [email protected], M: 07843 590 055

W: www.longsighttheatre.com

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