LSESU Drama Society event
Date: Saturday 13 February 2010
Time: 5-6.30pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speakers: Matt Charman, John Caird
Chair: Chris Megson
Theatre has a rich tradition of raising political issues, as evidenced in LSE founder George Bernard Shaw’s work. A discussion between a playwright and director on whether contemporary drama still aims to challenge audiences will be followed by a performance of extracts from ‘reactionary’ drama by the LSESU Drama Society.
John Caird is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm and a freelance theatre, opera and musical theatre director and librettist working regularly at the National Theatre in London, in the West End, on Broadway and all around the world. As well as directing numerous productions of classic plays from Shakespeare and Jonson to Gorky, Strindberg and Brecht, he has directed the world premieres of many new plays, operas and musicals. He has also directed, co-directed and adapted novels for the theatre and musical theatre, including renowned productions of Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby, Hamlet, Candide and Peter Pan.
Matt Charman is an award-winning playwright. His first play A Night at the Dogs, won the Verity Bargate Award and was performed at the Soho Theatre in 2005. His second, The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder, premiered at the Cottesloe, National Theatre in 2007. The Observer directed by Richard Eyre followed in 2009, also at the Cottesloe. Matt was Pearson Writer in Residence at the National Theatre through 2008. He is a recipient of a Peggy Ramsay Award and a winner of the Catherine Johnson Prize.
This event will be accompanied by an online exhibition of historic photographs from the LSE Library’s gay liberationist, pacifist and other collections, showing how activists used drama to campaign for change, www.lse.ac.uk/library.
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