Company News

The Davidson PlayGC Bursary

The Davidson PlayGC Bursary has been established to support theatres and writers to produce new work. An initial fund of £60,000 has been raised and the first £20,000 bursary was awarded to the Royal Court Theatre in London to support the new Artistic Director, David Byrne, as he launched his first season of plays. Byrne selected the playwright Oli Forsyth for the first bursary. Oli's play entitled BRACE BRACE, directed by Daniel Raggett will be staged from Thursday 3 October to Saturday 9 November in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court.

The arts and theatre are under enormous pressure, yet the need to foster and encourage new writing is an important part of theatre’s role in society. We set up PlayGC with the primary aim of supporting new theatre writing and this is one of the ways we are delivering that aim. We approached the Alan Davidson Foundation with the idea of collaborating to create this bursary, and we are thrilled that they readily agreed. We had been impressed with the work of David Byrne at the New Diorama Theatre, and, with his move to the Royal Court, the home of new writing, it seemed like the right time and place to fund the first bursary.

Details of BRACE BRACE at the Royal Court Theatre

Find out more about the work of our partner the Alan Davidson Foundation

PlayGC in NYC!

Plans were well under way for a September tour of David Greig’s The Letter of Last Resort to an off-Broadway theatre, until we heard that Equity work visa delays will necessitate a deferral to Spring 2025. We have been building great links with New York based Playhouse Creatures Theatre Compan y, led by Joseph Rodriguez, so are very hopeful that this is just a postponement not a cancellation. Anthony Biggs of Well Played Theatre Company will still direct it.
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The Four Seasons

In August we staged the inaugural performance of The Four Seasons: readings of poetry and prose set to Vivaldi's iconic symphony. With the crucial support of singer-songwriter Sara Jasmin Page, Robert and Lisa collated a range of pieces matched to both the mood and the length of the twelve movements that make up The Four Seasons.

Initially we worked to the world-famous Nigel Kennedy version. But then we came across the interpretation by Max Richter with Fenella Humphreys together with the Covent Garden Sinfonia and felt that this more ‘cinematic’ score worked better. In tandem, Sara set six short poems to original scores inspired by Vivaldi and these songs bookended the piece and each season.

The seasonal readings ranged from classics we all know like Keats’ Ode to Autumn and Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring and familiar writers including Anton Chekhov, the Brontës and Thomas Hardy, to current authors such as Susan Hill and some contemporary self-published online discoveries.

The result was enhanced massively by an exceptional creative team – Andrew Whadcoat on lights and Jenny Richardson on wardrobe, both of whom PlayGC have worked with before, and in particular we were grateful for the technical expertise and insights offered by the talented James Connor on sound.

We were again joined by Sam Ebner-Landy for this premiere performance, and were also delighted to welcome Rosalie Evans to our company.

Go to /gallery to see images of The Four Seasons in rehearsal.

The invited audience of about 100 in Ealing's Questors Theatre provided much insightful and constructive feedback on how we might take this fledgling project forwards, and we are now busily developing ideas accordingly, which may well feature an entire original rescoring by Sara of The Four Seasons music, to mark the 300th anniversary of the piece’s publication in 1725… watch this space!

and in other news for 2024 - 2025...

Lisa and Robert were invited by renowned Salisbury-based choir the St John Singers to join their Summer concert All You Need is Love on the evening of Saturday 6th July. To a packed and highly appreciative audience in St Thomas's Church, they read a wonderful assortment of love-themed poems and prose between the songs.

Buoyed by the positive response and helpful feedback to the staged reading in April 2022 of our new play Can’t Kill the Spirit, directed by Francesca McInally, at The Playground Theatre, White City, the script has seen further development, with the inclusion of a brand new scene and character. We hope this play, inspired by Greenham Common and modern-day protests, may see a formal production some time in early 2025, under the direction of Lucy Aley-Parker.

We have secured the professional rights to Christopher Reid’s wickedly funny poem and play Six Bad Poets. Some of you may have seen staged productions of this either at The Playground Theatre or The Questors Theatre back in 2019 and 2020, in which Robert played Charles Prime. For a future production, Robert will be the executive producer and the production will be directed by Anthony Biggs, former AD at Jermyn Street Theatre and The Playground Theatre, now of Well Played Theatre Company.