Christopher Haydon’s inaugural season as Artistic Director of the Gate theatre will take on the topical subject of political revolution in a season entitled Resist! Three Stories Of Rebels And Revolutionaries.
The trio of plays will run at the Notting Hill venue from May, kicking off with Greyscale Theatre’s snappily name Tenet: A True Story About The Revolutionary Politics Of Telling The Truth About Truth As Edited By Someone Who Is Not Julian Assange In Any Literal Sense, which will play from 1 to 29 May.
Co-written by Sandy Grierson and the show’s director Lorne Campbell, Tenet brings together two of Europe’s most notorious radicals, the 19th century mathematician Evariste Galois and the 21st century’s own Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, in a witty show about thinking outside the box, radical politics, maths, tea and biscuits.
Haydon will direct the second offering, Hassan Abdulrazzak’s The Prophet, from 14 June to 21 July. Set during last year’s extraordinary events in Egypt, Abdulrazzak’s play is based on extensive interviews in Cairo with revolutionaries, soldiers, journalists and cab drivers, and depicts both a revolution in progress and the society from which it sprang.
Rounding up the season from 13 September to 20 October is American playwright Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby. Directed by Sixty-Six Books director Charlotte Westenra, Sunset Baby is a comical look at the point where personal and political collide and centres on a black revolutionary and political prisoner, widower Kenyatta Shakur who must come to terms with his estranged daughter’s beliefs.
Describing the season as “an exciting time for the theatre”, Haydon said “I’m thrilled to announce my first season as Artistic Director of the Gate theatre. The company has always set internationalism at the core of its work – we are a small theatre with a truly global outlook. And the events of this past year have shown that now, more than ever, we need to be looking at events beyond our borders.”