The Young Vic has added new productions of August Strindberg’s Creditors and Barrie Keeffe’s Barbarians to its autumn season.
Both will run in the London venue’s Clare studio, directed by award-winning emerging young directors.
Creditors, in a new version by Scottish playwright David Greig, runs from 9 to 19 September directed by Genesis Future Directors Award winner Rikki Henry, while Barbarians, which runs from 27 November to 19 December, will be led by JMK Award winner Liz Stevenson.
Henry’s production marks the first major production of Strindberg’s three-handed exploration of the ethics of love since 2008.
Keeffe’s Barbarians, set in the South London of the 1970s, follows a trio of boys who leave school and find petty crime an apt outlet for their frustrations. But as they struggle to find a way in a society filled with unemployment and rejection, their friendship is threatened by the need to survive.
Henry and Stevenson will be joined at the influential Southwark theatre by new associates Gbolahan Obisesan and BirdGang Dance Company.
Playwright and director Obisesan follows Natalie Abrahami as the theatre’s new Genesis Fellow. The two year position will see the Feast co-writer and Sus director work closely with Young Vic Artistic Director David Lan to develop his own directorial craft while also working with the Young Vic’s young director schemes.
Birdgang, which has its roots in hip hop culture and first worked with the Young Vic on 2014’s A Harlem Dream, joins as an associate company.
Today’s announcements are the latest in an exciting year for the Young Vic, which has included winning a hatful of awards for A View From The Bridge, planning US transfers of both A View From The Bridge and A Streetcar Named Desire, and staging new versions of Measure For Measure and Macbeth along with the premiere of Simon Stephens’ play Song From Far Away at its Waterloo home.