Caryl Churchill

David Lan

A Mouthful of Birds

This play consists of 32 short vignettes relating to the theme of madness and possession. Lena is a mother who hears voices commanding her to drown her baby. A new spirit guide is taunting voodoo practitioner Marcia whilst Yvonne is a desperate alcoholic. Meanwhile, businessman Paul falls inexplicably and suddenly in love with a pig. A female prison warder bemoans the appearance of a new prisoner who is killing all her female inmates using magic, while Doreen is suffering from grotesque delusions. Herculine Barbin, played by a women but dressed as a man, delivers a monologue at the start of Act Two, while Dionysos, played by a man in a white petticoat, performs a series of dances that punctuate the action.

Sergeant Ola and His Followers

Flight

David Lan's evocative, fast-paced memoir takes us all over the globe, introducing us to an extraordinary cast of characters, places and experiences both on stage and off. A family day at the beach. There's a song, an argument, a dash across the white sand and into the high rolling waves. We're in Cape Town and David Lan is ten years old. Cut to 1969 and, visiting London fresh out of high school, he interviews theatre luminaries Sybil Thorndike, Tom Stoppard, Trevor Nunn, Paul Schofield before heading home to join the South African army. Now it's 1999. We're at the Young Vic where David is interviewed to be artistic director, a job he'd do for eighteen years, ensuring its flowering into a great world theatre. There's a redesign to be imagined, money to be raised, shows to be staged. And when the doors reopen in 2006 we meet the extraordinary artists he draws in: Ivo Van Hove, Jude Law, Richard Jones, Gillian Anderson, Patrice Chereau, Katie Mitchell, Stephen Daldry, the Isango Ensemble, Yerma, The Jungle, The Inheritance. We travel to Peter Brook's Paris, to Iceland in pursuit of a circus Romeo and Juliet, to Lithuania in search of his great grandparents, to a refugee camp in Congo with Joe Wright and Chiwetel Ejiofor, to Broadway for the Tony Awards. There's spirit mediums in the Zambezi Valley, Chekhov's Yalta, Luc Bondy's Vienna, making a BBC film in Angola, rehearsing a new play in Israel/Palestine. Along the way, memories constantly rise to the surface: the Royal Court in the 70s and 90s, school plays, his parents' complicated marriage. Woven through it all is his decades long relationship with playwright Nicholas Wright. At times hilarious and always deeply felt, David Lan's deft travels evoke a wildly varied life in theatre as well as a unique theatre of life.

As If by Chance

Timur Vermes

Philippe Claudel

Samar Yazbek

Burhan Sonmez

Nizar Zuabi

Andre Liohn

Good Chance Theatre Company

The official companion title for 'The Walk', where a 3.5m-high puppet will walk 8,000 km along the refugee route though Europe to the UK, in celebration of the contribution that migrants and refugees make to the cultures and communities through which they pass and to the countries in which they find a new home.

The Long Walk With Little Amal

A family day at the beach. There's a song, an argument, a dash across the white sand and into the high rolling waves. We're in Cape Town and David Lan is ten years old. Cut to 1969 and, visiting London fresh out of high school, he interviews theatre luminaries Sybil Thorndike, Tom Stoppard, Trevor Nunn, Paul Schofield before heading home to join the South African army. Now it's 1999. We're at the Young Vic where David is interviewed to be artistic director, a job he'd do for eighteen years, ensuring its flowering into a great world theatre. There's a redesign to be imagined, money to be raised, shows to be staged. And when the doors reopen in 2006 we meet the extraordinary artists he draws in: Ivo Van Hove, Jude Law, Richard Jones, Gillian Anderson, Patrice Chereau, Katie Mitchell, Stephen Daldry, the Isango Ensemble, Yerma, The Jungle, The Inheritance. We travel to Peter Brook's Paris, to Iceland in pursuit of a circus Romeo and Juliet, to Lithuania in search of his great grandparents, to a refugee camp in Congo with Joe Wright and Chiwetel Ejiofor, to Broadway for the Tony Awards. There's spirit mediums in the Zambezi Valley, Chekhov's Yalta, Luc Bondy's Vienna, making a BBC film in Angola, rehearsing a new play in Israel/Palestine. Along the way, memories constantly rise to the surface: the Royal Court in the 70s and 90s, school plays, his parents' complicated marriage. Woven through it all is his decades long relationship with playwright Nicholas Wright. At times hilarious and always deeply felt, David Lan's deft travels evoke a wildly varied life in theatre as well as a unique theatre of life.

Journeys, Theatres, Lives

As if by Chance

David Lan

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