At least one Hollywood star and an array of British film & TV stars will read uncomfortable letters of confrontation at a small theatre next week.
Will Poulter, who was in the multi-award winning The Revenant and blockbuster The Maze Runner, is one of the actors who will read “letters left unsaid”.
The show, Rachel De-Lahay’s original letter monologue My White Best Friend, will be performed at London Bridge’s The Bunker Theatre.
Other big names involved are Inès de Clercq (Broadchurch), Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who), Freddie Fox (Cucumber), Ellie Kendrick (Game of Thrones), Daisy Lewis (Downton Abbey), Brixton native Pearl Mackie (Doctor Who), Zackary Momoh (Seven Seconds), Tom Mothersdale (Treadstone), Prasanna Puwanarajah (Nightwatchman), Nabhaan Rizwan(Informer), Cara Theobold (Downton Abbey), Susan Wokoma (Chewing Gum) and comedian Ahir Shah (Live at the Apollo).
The sell-out week-long festival of monologues that say the unsaid to those that matter most was curated by Rachel De-Lahay & Milli Bhatia in March this year.
These performers will read the newly commissioned monologue letters for the first time ever – with no rehearsal – in front of intimate audiences at The Bunker. The line-up of each night, revealing which two performers will read which pieces will be announced at midday each day next week through The Bunker’s social media @BunkerTheatreUK.
The commissions are written by journalist Ash Sarkar, author Nikesh Shukla (The Good Immigrant), spoken word poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan (a.k.a. The Brown Hijabi) and Lena Dunham (GIRLS), joined by playwrights Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles), Rabiah Hussain (SPUN), Mika Johnson (Pink Lemonade), Jasmine Lee-Jones (seven methods of killing kylie jenner), Shireen Mula (Lists for The End of The World), Joel Tan (Love In the Time of the Ancients) and Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child).
Completing the line-up and returning to The Bunker is Emma Dennis-Edwards who wrote and performed the award-nominated Funeral Flowers in The Bunker’s Spring 2019 season.
The commissioned letters engage with unspoken tensions, microaggressions and emotional labour, asking how you start difficult conversations with someone you love about how their beliefs, their unthinking actions or their politics undermine, hurt and erase you.
Rachel De-Lahay’s original play My White Best Friend, which was originally part of The Bush Theatre’s Black Lives Black Words, will be performed each night, and joined by two of the newly commissioned letters which will be given to performers to read – unseen – for the first time onstage.
Each performance will be followed by a DJ set from D L K (a.k.a. Duramaney Kamara) in The Bunker with audiences invited to stay and enjoy the space until late.
Pictured: Poulter with Maze Runner co-star Kaya Scodelario.
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