New Gate director Christopher Haydon launches first season

The first, running from 1 to 26 May 2012, is titled Tenet: A True Story About the Revolutionary Politics of Telling the Truth About Truth as Edited by Someone Who is Not Julian Assange in Any Literal Sense.

A collaboration with Greyscale Theatre, it’s written by Lorne Campbell and Sandy Grierson and imagines an encounter between the nineteenth century French mathematician and political activist Evariste Galois and the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

It’s followed, from 14 June to 21 July, by Hassan Abdulrazzak‘s new play The Prophet. Directed by Haydon, the play is based on extensive interviews conducted in Cairo with participants in the recent Egyptian revolution and “depicts both a revolution in progress and the society from which it sprang”.

The final production in the season is the world premiere of American playwright Dominique Morisseau’s Sunset Baby, directed by newly appointed artistic associate Charlotte Westenra.

The play, which runs from 13 September to 20 October, examines the fractured relationship between a young woman and her father – a former political prisoner and Black revolutionary.

Haydon, who succeeds Natalie Abrahami and Carrie Cracknell at the Gate, said: “I’m thrilled to announce my first season as artistic director of the Gate Theatre. The company has always set internationalism at the core of its work – we are a small theatre with a truly global outlook. And the events of this past year have shown that now, more than ever, we need to be looking at events beyond our borders.

“The world has been shaken by a series of tectonic political and cultural shifts, as the financial crisis has continued to reverberate globally. From the Occupy movements in the West, to the revolutionaries who have taken to the streets across the Middle East, people are fighting to imagine and forge a better world.”

Alongside Westenra, he has also appointed Adam Brace, Oliver Townsend and Rachel Chavkin as associate artists.