Caroline Rooney | Executive Producer
Caroline is a Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellow and Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent. Her research by practice engages with arts activism and popular culture towards coming to terms with a new Middle East in the making. Theatre includes The Rebel Cell at El Sawy Culturewheel in Cairo.
Film includes The Road to Midan Tahrir, featuring interviews she carried out with Egyptian writers in 2010. Caroline’s poetry appears in an anthology of human rights poetry (London Human Rights Consortium, 2013) and she has published widely on the Arab avant-garde and popular culture, liberation struggles and their aftermaths, and alternative enlightenments. With director Mai Masri she is currently working on a documentary film addressing the experiences of Palestinian child prisoners. Her current research programme is entitled: Imagining the Common Ground.
Chris Foxon | Producer
Chris read English at Oxford University and trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama on an AHRC Scholarship. Chris is the producer of the multi-award-winning Papatango Theatre Company and was an assessor for the 2013 T.S. Eliot Commissions with the Old Vic Theatre.
Productions include Happy New (Trafalgar Studios), The Fear of Breathing (Finborough Theatre and Akasaka Red Theatre, Tokyo), Unscorched and Pack for Papatango Theatre Company at the Finborough Theatre, Old Vic New Voices 24 Hour Plays (The Old Vic), The Madness of George III (Oxford Playhouse) and Tejas Verdes (Edinburgh Festival).
Theatre as Assistant Producer includes On The Threshing Floor (Hampstead Theatre), ‘Endless Poem’ as part of Rio Occupation London (BAC, People’s Palace Projects and HighTide Festival Theatre) and Mudlarks (HighTide Festival Theatre, Theatre503 and Bush Theatre).
Carissa Hope Lynch | Dramaturg
Carissa trained at the University of California and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
As a dramaturg, theatre includes Gastronauts (Royal Court, Theatre Upstairs), Peckham: the Soap Opera (Royal Court, Bussey Building and Theatre Upstairs), Reasons to be Cheerful (Theatre Royal Stratford East, New Wolsey, National Tour), Prometheus Awakes (Greenwich and Docklands International Festival), The Garden (London 2012 Festival), and The Iron Man (Brighton Festival, GDiF). She supported script and concept development in respective collaborations between Graeae and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre Royal Plymouth, and Dundee Repertory. Carissa has read for the Bruntwood Prize for playwriting and the Verity Bargate Award, and she is the Deputy Literary Manager at the Royal Court Theatre.
Emily Jones | Casting Director
Theatre includes Unscorched (Papatango Theatre Company at the Finborough Theatre), As You Like It and Richard III (Changeling Theatre) and World Enough and Time (Dalston Bunker).
Theatre as assistant to Ginny Schiller includes 1984 (Headlong), Relative Values (Theatre Royal Bath), Scenes from a Marriage (St James Theatre), A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and Ghosts (Rose Theatre Kingston) and Pride and Prejudice (Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park). Film includes Limbo and Ibiza Undead.
David Leigh-Pemberton | Production Manager
David trained at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is a freelance general manager and production manager.
Production management includes Journeying Boys (Guildhall School of Music and Drama), Nothing is the End of the World (Except the End of the World), Somersaults and Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun (Finborough Theatre).
David was Production Assistant on Potted Potter (Garrick Theatre) and General Manager for Sunstroke (Platform Studio Theatre). David is Technical Manager for the annual charity event West End Bares (Café De Paris).
David Mumeni | Assistant Director
David trained as an actor at Drama Centre, London and is an Associate Artist of The National Youth Theatre.
Theatre as an actor includes ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Cheek by Jowl), Product Placement (Nabokov) and The Machine (The Donmar Warehouse and New York).
Television as an actor includes Fresh Meat, PhoneShop, Cuckoo, Confessions From The Underground and Whitechapel.
Film as an actor includes The Inbetweeners Movie and Noble.
Writing includes Our Days of Rage (Old Vic Tunnels) and My Christian Name (The Lantern Theatre, Liverpool).
Directing includes Odd Ball (Lost Theatre) and Fishbowl (Not Too Tame).
Assistant Directing includes Lysistrata and Poundtown (Greenwich Theatre).
Jessica Campbell | Assistant Producer
Jessica read English at Oxford University.
Theatre as producer includes Hansel and Gretel (Opera in Space at the Bussey Building), Bloody Poetry (Keble O’Reilly Theatre) and Mephisto (Oxford Playhouse), which transferred to the International Student Drama Festival 2013, The State Vs John Hayes (Hen and Chickens Theatre and Edinburgh Festival) and The Comedy of Errors (Southwark Playhouse, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Japan).
Production Acknowledgements
Production Photography | Richard Davenport
Production Artwork | Nidal El-Khairy
Graphic Design | Felix Trench
This production was initiated by Caroline Rooney in dialogue with Mai Masri as part of the RCUK funded Imagining the Common Ground programme. The play was inspired by true stories and developed through research by Caroline Rooney and Zoe Lafferty. We would like to thank the following people and organisations in Palestine for their help and support: the YMCA in Beit Sahour and Al-Khalil and the young ex-prisoners we met through them; Addameer; the Abu Jihad Museum; Zakaria Zubeidi, Faisal Abu Alhayjaa, Majd Beltaji, Momin Switat and Adnan Torokman.
The play was initially developed with the following actors:
Nyasha Hatendi, Nicholas Karimi, Siân Polhill-Thomas and John Wark.
We would also like to thank the following:
Henry Gilbert, Micheal Cusick, Nadia Nadif, Zoë Nicole, Abram Rooney, Sian Goff, Miles Mitchell, Paul Mclaughlin, Lola Frears, Nick Bruckman, Anna Brooks-Beckman, Rodrigo Penalosa Pita, Richard Listor, Hannah Jenner, Bérengère Auriaudo De Castelli, Anastasiya Trayanova, Rita Sakr and Julia Borossa.
About Park Theatre
“A spanking new five-star neighbourhood theatre” Independent
Opened in May 2013, Park Theatre consists of two theatres – with 200 seats and 90 seats respectively – plus a dedicated community learning space, an all day cafe-bar and ancillary facilities.
With a broad artistic policy encompassing both classics and new writing and an ambitious outreach programme, Park Theatre sits at the heart of its community.
“A first-rate