Madani Younis, the new artistic director of the Bush Theatre, announced details of his inaugural season at a reception at the theatre this morning. Younis, who previously held the role of artistic director at Freedom Studios in Bradford, spoke of his intention to nurture new writers and produce work that “honours the storyteller.”
The season begins in April with Chalet Lines by Lee Mattinson (whose recent plays include the endearing one woman piece, Donna Disco) which will be produced in association with the Live Theatre in Newcastle and which Younis himself will direct. The play will be about several generations of women in the same family and will be set in a Butlins holiday camp in Skegness. This will be followed in May by a double bill of solo work from two of the theatre’s new associate artists, Sabrina Mahfouz and Caroline Horton. Mahfouz will be performing her spoken word show, Dry Ice – a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe – and Horton will be performing her own one woman play, a charming and touching show inspired by the life of her grandmother, You’re Not Like the Other Girls Chrissy.
Next up, the Bush will stage its first international co-production, The Beloved, with Palestinian theatre company ShiberHur; this will be part of the World Stages London Festival. The final production of the season to be staged in the main house will be Fear, the first work for the stage from the BAFTA-winning film maker Dominic Savage.
Younis also announced the creation of a second studio space at the Bush, which will play host to Iron Shoes’ Mad About the Boy later in the year. He also called for more fluidity of movement between those writing for the stage an those writing for TV and film. To this end, the Bush is planning a co-commissioning project with Kudos, the production company behind The Hour and Spooks. He spoke of his hopes to broaden the theatre’s constituency and to explore “forms that go beyond the Western European model.” The Bush, in its new home in Shepherd’s Bush’s Old Library building on the Uxbridge Road, faces onto the street for the first time in its history and Younis spoke of his hopes to make the venue more “porous”, to forge connections with the local community and to engage with the diversity directly outside its door. In a promotional film for the forthcoming season, he set out his vision for the theatre’s future: “”The one thing I’m clear about is you don’t come to the Bush Theatre because you want to hug. You come to the Bush Theatre because you want to be provoked.”
