Sheffield Theatres today announces the cast for its trilogy of new plays, Rock / Paper / Scissors, by Chris Bush.
Performing across all three theatres, the cast includes: Denise Black (Coronation Street) playing Susie, Natalie Casey (Guys and Dolls) playing Mel, Andrew Macbean (Amadeus) playing Leo, Daisy May (Sex Education) playing Molly, Alastair Natkiel (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) playing Billy, Samantha Power (Chicken Soup) playing Faye, Guy Rhys (Mary, Queen of Scots) playing Omar, Lucie Shorthouse (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie) playing Zara, Dumile Sibanda (Hedda) playing Ava, Jabez Sykes (Spring Awakening) playing Mason, Maia Tamrakar (Spring Awakening) playing Liv, Joe Usher (The Last Days of Judas) playing Trent, Chanel Waddock (Hamlet) playing Coco and Leo Wan (Bridgerton) playing Xander.
Denise Black returns to Sheffield Theatres after appearing in Miniatures, her first professional acting job, and Sisters. Natalie Casey is welcomed back following her role in 2019 Christmas musical Guys and Dolls. Alastair Natkiel returns after starring in Standing at the Sky’s Edge, also in 2019. Lucie Shorthouse returns having played Pritti Pasha in the original Sheffield production of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and more recently the lead in Victoria Wood’s Talent in 2020. Having appeared in Chicken Soup in the Studio, Samantha Power is also welcomed back to Sheffield Theatres.
Andrew Macbean, Daisy May, Guy Rhys, Dumile Sibanda, Jabez Sykes, Maia Tamrakar, Joe Usher, Chanel Waddock and Leo Wan all make their Sheffield Theatres debut. Four of the roles have been written by Chris Bush specifically for actors who graduated during the pandemic; to ensure them a platform after having launched their careers in such difficult and unprecedented circumstances.
Additional members of the creative team are also announced: joining the previously announced co-directors Robert Hastie, Anthony Lau and Elin Schofield, and designers Janet Bird (Paper in the Lyceum Theatre), Natasha Jenkins (Scissors in the Studio Theatre) and Ben Stones (Rock in the Crucible Theatre), are: Lighting Designers Richard Howell, Jai Morjaria and Johanna Town; Composer Richard Taylor; Sound Designers Tingying Dong, Annie May Fletcher and Sam Glossop; Movement Director Tom Herron; Casting Director Christopher Worrall, Casting Consultant Stuart Burt CDG and Assistant Sound Designer José Guillermo Puello. The Assistant Directors are Callum Berridge, Grace Cordell and Alexandra Whiteley, with Alexandra and Callum joining the creative team as current members of Sheffield Theatres’ Bank Cohort for 2022.
Rock / Paper / Scissors are three new plays by Chris Bush (Standing at the Sky’s Edge). The centrepiece of Sheffield Theatres’ 50th Anniversary celebrations, the plays will see all three Sheffield spaces – The Crucible, Studio and Lyceum theatres – unite to stage Chris’s new trilogy of plays. Three interlinked but standalone plays will tell the story of a Sheffield scissor manufacturer and the three generations feuding over what happens to the factory site. In a theatrical first, the same cast perform in the Crucible, Lyceum and Studio simultaneously, dashing between scenes, when a character exits one stage, they arrive on another.
Rock / Paper / Scissors runs at Sheffield Theatres from Thursday 16 June – Saturday 2 July 2022. Tickets can be booked through the Box Office in person, over the phone on 0114 249 6000 or at sheffieldtheatres.co.uk.
