The Donmar Warehouse’s forthcoming spring season will see Josie Rourke and James Graham reunite for a bold new play entitled The Vote, which is to be broadcast live on television on General Election night in partnership with Channel 4.
The production, which is set in a fictional polling station during the final 90 minutes of Election Day 2015, will be screened on More4 at the precise date and time at which the play is set. The show’s run culminates on that day, the 7 May, following a limited run from 24 April.
At this morning’s press conference Artistic Director Rourke described the play as being more about the process of voting than party politics, saying: “Polling stations – unless you have small kids, they tend to be primary schools – are spaces that you don’t enter except once every three or four years when you cast your vote. There is something essentially democratic about that moment. You’re with your neighbours. You’re with the people you live next to. That’s an extraordinary moment in which to express the diversity of the electorate and the diversity of community and what those encounters are between people who don’t ordinarily necessarily meet.”
The Vote follows Rourke and Olivier Award nominated playwright Graham’s collaboration on the Donmar’s 2014 exploration of the digital age, Privacy, which Rourke described as “one of the most thrilling and sometimes terrifying experiences of my life as a director”.
Talking about their forthcoming collaboration, and how it came about, Rourke said: “James and I were in conversation just after we finished Privacy about the next General Election and one of the things we got very interested in was specifically about what it is to vote in the 21st century, what it is to enter a polling station and to cast your vote.”
Almost 50 actors will appear in The Vote, taking on the roles of polling station staff and voters. While tickets for the production will be available via a ballot, the details of which will be announced separately, everyone with access to More4 will be able to see the play as it is streamed live from the venue to their television screens.
Rourke spoke about the significance of The Vote’s live broadcast, which follows successful initiatives such as NT Live: “I would love to see more theatre on television. One of the things that is amazing about NT Live is that you turn up [to cinemas], and I think what’s good about the fact that this is around a General Election is that it has the sense of a turning up, the sense of a national event. We’re using that to push at the boundaries.”
Prior to The Vote’s run at the venue, Rachel Redford will lead the cast of Patrick Marber’s Closer alongside Olivier Award winner Nancy Carroll, King Charles III and Great Britain star Oliver Chris, and Old Times’ Rufus Sewell.
The play, which took home the Olivier Award for Best New Play following its premiere in 1997, will be directed by David Leveaux from 12 February (press night 23 February) to 4 April.
Set at the end of the 20th century Closer is a tale, described by Rourke as “cutting a searing slice through the human heart”, of lives colliding and fates changing in an instant as strangers become lovers and lovers become strangers.
Completing the season from 21 May (press night 27 May) to 25 July is Temple. Steve Waters’ fictional account inspired by the 2011 Occupy demonstration at St Paul’s Cathedral will star Olivier Award winner Simon Russell Beale.
Set in the heart of a British crisis – a crisis of conscience, a crisis of authority and a crisis of faith – Temple tells the story of the iconic London building, which remained open during floods, terrorist attacks and the Blitz, as it closes on 21 October 2011 and legal action begins to remove Occupy London from outside its walls.
Howard Davies will direct Russell Beale as the Dean. The actor returns to the Donmar Warehouse following performances in The Philanthropist, Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya, for which he picked up an Olivier Award for Best Actor. Russell Beale’s recent stage credits include King Lear, Timon Of Athens and Collaborators at the National Theatre.
The new season, which Rourke described as having “serious innovation and risk” at its heart, will follow the current run of Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female Henry IV and the forthcoming musical revival of City Of Angels.