Papatango announces the full cast and creative team for the world première of Clive Judd’s Here, the winner of the 2022 Papatango New Writing Prize.
Directed by Papatango’s Artistic Director George Turvey, the production opens on 15 November 2022 at The Large at Southwark Playhouse, with previews from 11 November, and runs until 3 December 2022.
Set in the West Midlands, Here is a tender, funny and utterly truthful story about family and feeling, performed by Lucy Benjamin (Monica), Mark Frost (Jeff), Sam Baker-Jones (Matt) and Hannah Millward (Jess). The ensemble of actors all have strong connections to the West Midlands.
Completing the creative team are Jasmine Swan (Set and Costume Designer), Bethany Gupwell (Lighting Designer) and Asaf Zohar (Composer and Sound Designer).
Clive Judd’s debut play won the 2022 Papatango Prize from a record 1,553 scripts – more submissions, by annual average, than any other UK playwriting award. Heralding a remarkable new talent, this year’s Prize production will run on Papatango’s biggest ever stage – The Large at Southwark Playhouse – offering main house billing for a debut playwright. It follows previous Papatango Prize discoveries who have gone on to win Olivier, Critics’ Circle and OffWestEnd Awards and première worldwide.
A family packs into a small house with a tangled history. Matt is here, yearning to reach someone he’s lost. His cousin Jess is here, too; she just wants to feel something. Anything. And Aunt Monica and Jeff are still here, just about. Together, ferocious and funny, they laugh, they scrap, they remember.
Tonight these four people, inextricably bound yet so far apart, will finally confront the old decisions that haunt them. How does a family make a future, when everything that holds it together lies in the past?