All-Star Writing Team & Cast for Goold’s 9/11 Decade
Writers including Christopher Shinn, Lynn Nottage and John Logan and historian and social commentator Simon Schama will work with director Rupert Goold and Headlong Theatre to create Decade, the company’s site-specific response to the legacy of the September 11 attacks.
Playrights Abi Morgan, Samuel Adamson, Mike Bartlett and Alecky Blythe will also work on the production, which is billed as a “thrillingly imaginative investigation” into the legacy of the September 11 attacks.
Decade aims to provide an “an immersive theatrical experience” that will take audience members from the River Thames to Manhattan in exploring the “first global event in the age of the internet”, a day when “everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news”.
American playwright Christopher Shinn‘s credits include the Evening Standard Award-winning Now or Later at the Royal Court and Dying City which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His other works include Where Do We Live and Other People.
Lynn Nottage is a Brooklyn-born playwright whose work includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined and was the recipient of seven Best Play Awards including the New York Critics’ Circle Award, two Drama Desk Awards and four OBIE Awards. It was most recently seen at the Almeida Theatre. Her other credits include Fabulation, Intimate Apparel, A Walk Through Time, Crumbs From the Table of Joy, Mud River Stone, Por’Knockers, Poof and Las Meninas.
John Logan‘s plays include Red, produced at the Donmar Warehouse and on Broadway where won the Tony Award for Best Play. Amongst his 13 other plays are Never the Sinner, Hauptmann, Speaking in Tongues, Scorched Earth and Riverview. As a screenwriter, his credits include Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Aviator, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Any Given Sunday and RKO 281.
Historian and social commentator Simon Schama is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University. His history Rough Crossings won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and was produced for stage by Headlong in 2007. He contributes to the New Yorker and has written and presented more than thirty documentaries for the BBC, PBS and the History Channel, including The Power of Art, Art of the Western World and his award-winning 15 part History of Britain.
Bafta Award-winning writer Abi Morgan’s credits include BBC flagship drama The Hour and upcoming Margaret Thatcher film Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep. Her stage credits include work with Frantic Assembly on Tiny Dynamite, The Night Is Darkest Before The Dawn (part of the Tricycle Theatre’s Great Game season), Fugee (NT New Connections), Tender (Hampstead) and Splendour (Paines Plough).
Samuel Adamson’s writing credits include Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Southwark Fair, Mrs Affleck, Fish and Company, Clocks and Whistles, Grace Note, Some Kind of Bliss and All About My Mother. He is currently collaborating with songwriter Tori Amos on musical The Light Princess for the National Theatre.
Mike Bartlett’s credits include Earthquakes in London, which was presented at the National in conjunction with Headlong and will be toured by the company this autumn. His other writing credits include 13 which opens at the National in October, Love, Love, Love for Paines Plough, Cock at the Royal Court, Artefacts at the Bush and My Child at the Royal Court.
Alecky Blythe‘s credits include the acclaimed verbatim musical London Road which is currently playing an extended run at the National Theatre. Her other credits include The Girlfriend Experience, Do We Look Like Refugees?, Cruising and Come Out Eli.
Decade is designed by Miriam Buether and choreographed by Scott Ambler, with lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and sound and composition by Adam Cork. Conceived and developed by Rupert Goold with Robert Icke, it is presented by Headlong in association with Chichester Festival Theatre.
