The Bandaged Woman, the disarming new production from Theatre63, explores what success means in our already unfair world.
How does an artist contend with a privileged background and what demons infect their work?
Wednesday 24th November – Saturday 4th December 2021
The Old Red Lion Theatre, 418 St. John Street, London, EC1V 4NJ
The Bandaged Woman, from Theatre63, comes to The Old Red Lion Theatre, examining the trials and tribulations of being born into a privileged life. It asks what do you do when you’re born with so much and considers how do you make yourself worthy in the eyes of those who have nothing? Why do we champion success if it means the failures of others, who is to blame? Hera is running on the fumes of her father’s fading career. After a string of her own theatrical failures, she’s set on making her own one woman play and making a name for herself. But a crowd gathers outside her family’s estate with other ideas of what she should do with her privilege.
Hera arrives home, to sell her family’s estate and finds her Father won’t leave his office. A mysterious bandaged woman who says she’s her maid won’t leave her alone. A gardener called Janos catches her eye with his ability to enjoy the simpler things in life. All while the city inhabitants bang on the gates outside. But Hera’s not worried. She knows what the true focus is. As the crowd gets closer and closer, she tries to uncover how to make her next play a sell out and finally gain her father’s acceptance.
Three plays, all failures, all embarrassments… They don’t like Hera because they know who her father is, but they don’t like him anymore, so maybe they’ll give her another chance? She just has to find out what to feed them, what will set the stage on fire.
Written by William Proudler (The Bandaged Woman, Mountview Catalyst Festival; Tony and Massandra Mysteries, Big Finish; Cockroached, Theatre63/Pleasance Courtyard), Produced by Jing Bi (Small Hours, Mountview Catalyst Festival; The Bandaged Woman, Mountview Catalyst Festival) and directed by Ruby Etches (The Bandaged Woman, Mountview Catalyst Festival; Twelfth Night, Tread the Boards/Shakespeare in the Park; Cockroached, Theatre63/Pleasance Courtyard). With Freya Sharp (Woman in Nuclear War, The Old Red Lion Theatre; The Little Prince, Vienna’s English Theatre; Pinocchio, Oddsocks Productions), Jacqueline Johnson (Emmerdale; The Bandaged Woman, Mountview Catalyst Festival) and Samuel Hoult (Mountview Theatre School) taking on the lead roles.
Speaking of the work, William Proudler comments, When you go to the theatre and the lights go down and you can drift off into a dream. And who’s up there on the stage, but those who are more successful than us, and they shine lights at them, even their name is lit up in lights on the front door. I was interested in the dark side of success. We all want our name in lights, and we can be like moths to these lights, willing to do terrible things just to get close. Success is a double edge sword they say, well I wanted to see characters cut by that sword.
Theatre63 was formed in 2016 by a group of Birmingham School of Acting graduates. The Company’s first show Cockroached premiered at Birmingham’s Old Joint Stock Theatre before appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and being nominated for a National Student Drama Festival (NSDF) Edinburgh Award. Since then, the Company have concentrated on solo projects but are now ready to re-enter the industry with this daring new show at a time when the industry is making massive shifts and changes.