Traverse Theatre Company Announces Tracks Of The Winter Bear Cast

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1 Contact: Cian O Siochain, Press Officer cian@traverse.co.uk / / Traverse Theatre Company Announces Tracks Of The Winter Bear Cast 6 November 2015: For Immediate Release By Rona Munro & Stephen Greenhorn Directed By Orla O Loughlin & Zinnie Harris The Traverse Theatre Company today announces the cast for its forthcoming production Tracks of the Winter Bear. The all-female, ensemble cast features a number of well-known performers. Deborah Arnott (Caucasian Chalk Circle, Royal Lyceum), Karen Bartke (My Name Is..., Tamasha Theatre, UK tour), Caroline Deyga (Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, National Theatre of Scotland), Kathryn Howden (The Last Witch, Edinburgh International Festival/ Traverse) and Molly Innes (The Artist Man and the Mother Woman, Traverse Theatre Company) have appeared in numerous productions in Scotland and internationally and bring a wealth of experience. The double bill brings seasonal stories, with a touch of the mystic, to the stage. It features world premieres by Rona Munro and Stephen Greenhorn inspired by ideas of wintery landscapes, Edinburgh and polar bears. Both playwrights have achieved considerable fame for their work in stage and other media and have a long association with the Traverse, which counts them among its most successful alumni. Both expressed their excitement at the prospect of this unique project and have worked closely to bring their individual ideas to fruition. Here again they bring their renowned wit and surreal but incisive gaze to bear on contemporary issues. Tracks of the Winter Bear is directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O Loughlin and Traverse Associate Director Zinnie Harris. Kai Fisher is the designer and David Paul Jones is the sound designer and composer. Lighting design is by Simon Wilkinson. Orla O Loughlin said, What a wonderful way to end the year, with a double bill of wintry plays by two of Scotland s finest playwrights and Traverse alumni. These plays offer a heartfelt and often fantastical insight into themes of loss, fear and love. As such they feel very much of the season. Both create a dreamlike canvas on which two very individual but equally inventive journeys unfold. By turns tragic and darkly comic, our Tracks of the Winter Bear double bill promises an exciting and daringly theatrical experience for Traverse audiences this December. Zinnie Harris added, It s been a pleasure to work with Rona and Stephen on this; their experience of writing for the stage, imagination and theatrical flair mean the scripts are rich with ideas and individuality. Both are stories with a strong link to Edinburgh, and both are about facing our fears and not walking away from life. Set against a snowy landscape and complete with a polar bear, it promises to be a mid-winter treat

2 Stephen Greenhorn added, I'm delighted to be back working at the Traverse again. It's a place which holds many special memories for me. I'm particularly thrilled to be collaborating with Rona on such a unique project. I can't wait see it come to life." ENDS Notes for Editors Director Biography Orla O Loughlin (Artistic Director, Traverse Theatre) Orla is Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre. Prior to taking up post at the Traverse, she was Artistic Director of the award-winning Pentabus Theatre and International Associate at the Royal Court Theatre. This season she will be co-directing the Traverse Theatre s Tracks of the Winter Bear, a double bill of plays by Rona Munro (The James Plays, Iron, The Last Witch) and Stephen Greenhorn (Passing Places, Sunshine on Leith). Other directing work for the Traverse includes The Scotsman Fringe First and Scottish Arts Club Theatre award-winning Swallow, The Scotsman Fringe First award-winning Spoiling, The Scotsman Fringe First, Herald Angel and CATS award-winning Ciara, The Devil Masters, Clean, A Respectable Widow Takes to Vulgarity, Fifty Plays for Edinburgh, The Arthur Conan Doyle Appreciation Society, The Artist Man and the Mother Woman, and the Herald Angel award-winning Dream Plays (Scenes From A Play I ll Never Write). Other directing work includes: For Once (Hampstead Theatre Studio, National Tour); Kebab (Dublin International Festival/ Royal Court Theatre); How Much is your Iron? (Young Vic); The Hound of the Baskervilles (West Yorkshire Playhouse/ National Tour/ West End); Tales of the Country, Origins (Pleasance/ Theatre Severn); Relatively Speaking, Blithe Spirit, Black Comedy (Watermill Theatre); Small Talk: Big Picture (BBC World Service/ ICA/ Royal Court Theatre); A Dulditch Angel (National Tour) and The Fire Raisers, sob stories, Refrain (BAC). Orla is a former recipient of the James Menzies Kitchin Award and the Carlton Bursary at the Donmar Warehouse. She was recently listed in the Observer as one of the top 50 cultural leaders in the UK. Director Biography Zinnie Harris Zinnie Harris is a multi-award winning playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She splits her time between St Andrews where she is Senior Lecturer in playwriting and screenwriting and the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, where she is the Associate Director. Her directing includes The Garden which was part of the Traverse Fringe program, While you Lie for the Traverse, and Solstice and Midwinter for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Among the plays she has written are How To Hold Your Breath (Royal Court Theatre, 2015, winner of the Berwin Lee Award 2015); The Message and On The Watch (Tricycle Theatre London 2012), The Wheel (National Theatre of Scotland, 2011) joint winner of the 2011 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and a Fringe First, short-listed for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; The Panel (Tricycle Theatre, London 2010); The Garden (Traverse Theatre, 2009); Fall (Traverse Theatre, 2008) Solstice (RSC, 2005); Midwinter (RSC, 2004) winner of an Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for playwriting, and short-listed for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award; Nightingale And Chase (Royal Court, 2001); and Further Than The Furthest Thing (Royal National Theatre/Tron Theatre, 2000/1), which was winner of the Peggy Ramsay Playwriting Award, the John Whiting Award and a Fringe First

3 award as well as being specially commended by the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and short-listed for the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright, By Many Wounds (Hampstead Theatre 1999) shortlisted for the Allied Domecq Award and the Meyer Whitworth Award. Adaptations include A Doll s House (Donmar Warehouse, 2009) and Miss Julie (National Theatre of Scotland, 2006). Zinnie also writes for television and radio, including two 90 minute dramas for Channel 4 Born With Two Mothers and Richard Is My Boyfriend, episodes for the BBC One Drama Series Spooks, and as lead writer on the series Partners In Crime, based on the Agatha Christie novels Tommy And Tuppence, for Endor / BBC 1. Zinnie is currently under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland. She has been Associate Director at the Traverse Theatre since Spring Playwright Biography Rona Munro Rona Munro has written extensively for stage, radio, film and television including the trilogy The James Plays 'for the National Theatre of Scotland, The National Theatre of Great Britain and the Edinburgh International Festival. The James Plays won the Evening Standard best play and Writer s Guild best play awards in 2015 Other credits include award winning plays Iron which won the John Whiting Award in 2003, The Maiden Stone which won the Peggy Ramsay Memorial award and Bold Girls which won the Evening Standard award, Critics Circle award and Susan Smith Blackburn award. Film and TV work includes Oranges And Sunshine directed by Jim Loach and starring Emily Watson and Hugo Weaving, the Ken Loach film Ladybird Ladybird which won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival, Aimee and Jaguar, Silver Bear winner and Golden Globe nomination, and BAFTA nominated Bumping The Odds for the BBC. She has also written many other single plays for TV and contributed to series such as Casualty and Dr Who. Playwright Biography Stephen Greenhorn Stephen has been a professional dramatist for theatre, radio and television since His plays have been produced by a wide variety of theatre companies across the UK and around the world. Notable successes include The Salt Wound (1994) for 7:84, Passing Places (1997) for the Traverse (produced at Pitlochry in 2014), King Matt (2001) for TAG, and award-winning The Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith for Dundee Rep which toured the UK and Scotland His feature adaptation of Sunshine on Leith for Black Camel Pictures/DNA premiered September 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival to rave reviews and has enjoyed a UK-wide release. Stephen's TV work includes the six-part drama series Glasgow Kiss (BBC1, 2000), the feature length adaptation of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (BBC1, 2006), two episodes of Doctor Who and criticallyacclaimed five-part series Marchlands (ITV, 2011). He also created the popular soap opera River City for BBC Scotland. Designer Biography Kai Fisher Recent set and lighting designs include Inés de Castro (Scottish Opera), Grit (Pachamama), The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler, Little Otik (National Theatre of Scotland and Vanishing Point), Wonderland (Vanishing Point, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and Tramway / Edinburgh International Festival), Saturday Night (Vanishing Point, TNSJ Porto, CCVF Guimarães, São Luiz Teatro Municipal Lisboa, Tramway and Compagnia Teatrale Europea), Interiors, Subway (Vanishing Point), Somersaults, Mancub, Home Caithness (National Theatre of Scotland), A Midsummer Night's Dream,

4 Wondrous Flitting (Royal Lyceum Edinburgh), Mister Holgado (Unicorn London), Heer Ranjha, Fewer Emergencies (Ankur), Kind of Silence (Solar Bear) and One Night Stand (Nick Underwood). Earlier this year, Kai created and directed Last Dream (On Earth), an award-winning theatre and live music performance experienced on headphones. His previous project, Entartet, an installation and performance which opened at the CCA in Glasgow, featured as an off-site event in the Traverse Theatre program, presented at Edinburgh s Old Ambulance Depot. Lighting Design Biography Simon Wilkinson Simon is an associate artist of Magnetic North, and designed lighting for their productions of Sex and God, Pass the Spoon, Wild Life and After Mary Rose. For Vox Motus his designs include the award winning Dragon, Slick, Bright Black, The Not-So-Fatal-Death of Grandpa Fredo and their recent coproduction with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company The Infamous Brothers Davenport. Other recent theatre work includes Thingummy Bob for the Traverse Theatre Company, In Her Shadows for North Edinburgh Arts, HUP for Starcatchers The Weir and The Iliad for the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, This Wide Night for Tron Theatre, The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe for the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company, Whatever Gets You Through The Night for Pachamama Productions, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, Roman Bridge and Truant for the National Theatre of Scotland; Cinderella for the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh; My Name is Rachel Corrie for Mull Theatre; The Static for ThickSkin; HeLa International Tour, Skewered Snails for Iron Oxide, The Mark of Zorro and The Hunted for Visible Fictions; PUSH for Curious Seed, Antigone for Lung Ha s, After the End and Top Dog/Underdog for the Citizens Theatre, Encourage the Others for the Almeida, Honk! at the Royal and Derngate, Paperbelle and Moussa s Castle for Frozen Charlotte and the 2010 season for Pitlochry Festival Theatre. His commercial theatre work includes the original UK touring version of Mum s the Word and its sequel Mum s the Word 2: Teenagers; Strictly the Ratpack and The Official Blues Brothers Revival at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin; Gary Wilmot s UK concert tour My Kind of Music, and the UK tours of The Odd Couple, A Happy Medium, Dirty Dusting and Always... Patsy Cline Simon s lighting has won a Guinness World Record, caused reports of an alien invasion, and attracted tens of thousands of people to a windswept Highland forest. Most recently he was nominated for Best Design in the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland for Dragon. This is his third nomination in the CATS after Slick (2009) and Pass The Spoon (2012). Sound Designer/Composer Biography David Paul Jones David is delighted to return to the Traverse this season. His previous Traverse productions include The Tree Of Knowledge (2011) and Bloody Trams (2014). His theatre work spans 20 years including a series of soundtracks for Grid Iron - Those Eyes, That Mouth (2003),The Devil's Larder (2005), Barflies (2009) and What Remains (2011). His work for the National Theatre of Scotland includes Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (2006); Something Wicked This Way Comes ( a co-production with Catherine Wheels); Mary Queen Of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (2009); Our Teacher s A Troll (2009); Dolls ( a co-production with Hush Productions) and The Missing (2011). His work in children s theatre includes his chamber opera The Songbird (2010) and soundtracks for Catherine Wheels productions: Pobby & Dingan (2010) and Caged (2011). His international projects include projects in Australia, South America, USA, Middle East, Singapore and more recently as composer for the National Theatre Of China in Beijing and Hong Kong. His recent work in 2015 includes the soundtrack to Butterfly by Ramesh Meyyappan, the soundtrack to a short film Threads by Curious Seed, the soundtrack to World Factory for Metis Arts/Young Vic London, Dundee Rep's production of Jo Clifford's Great Expectations and the 10- year anniversary remount of Grid Iron s The Devil s Larder.

5 He is the recipient of several awards including the Glenfiddich Spirit Of Scotland Award for Music.His recorded work is available on Linn Records and Deborah Arnott Deborah has toured extensively with theatre productions across Europe, Japan and Hong Kong, and has directed youth theatre in Ireland, Scotland and Canada. Theatre credits include: Caucasian Chalk Circle (Royal Lyceum); Hairy Maclary and Friends (Edinburgh Fringe 15/Hong Kong Tour); The Mammoth (Ace Productions); Lickety Leap (Licketyspit TC); Museum of Dreams (Citizens' Theatre); In The Deep Midwinter (North Edinburgh TC); The Tale of the Hare and the Tortoise (Wee Stories/Ed Fest/Lyric Hammersmith); Mother Courage and The Cherry Orchard (Benchtours); Molly Whuppie (Wee Stories TC); Ecstasy (Raven TC/Ed Fest); The Scaldie House, Media Star and Breaking Free (Edinburgh Theatre Workshop); Pygmalion (The International TC); Stoker (Awarehaus); These Fifty Festival Years (Edinburgh International Festival); The Face Off (Boilerhouse) The Greetin' Weans and The Box (Stirling Macrobert) Film and TV credits include: Taggart: Cause to Kill (SMG/ITV), End of Story (BBC), History of Scottish Christianity That Old One (Tartan Short/BBC), History of Scottish Christianity and Looking After Jo Jo (BBC) and National Anthem (Film). Aside from her acting career, she is an accomplished banjo player and regularly plays in the Scottish banjo duet Blueflint. Blueflint have toured throughout the world and also supported The Proclaimers on their recent tour. Karen Bartke Karen first found her feet as a member of Glasgow Schools Youth Theatre before studying Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. Stage credits include My Name Is... (Tamasha Theatre, UK tour); The Man Who Had All The Luck (Sell A Door/Mull Theatre UK tour); No Time Has Passed in Hippoland (Sonic Boom); Pygmalion (GTP); Twelfth Night (Goodnightout Theatre) On screen she is best known as Officer Karen in the mockumentary Scot Squad (Comedy Unit). She has also appeared in The Kronicles of Kirk for the Comedy Unit; as the musical-minded Mother in a series of sponsorship idents for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Superstar series; and in comedy short Fakers for Aficionado Films. On radio, she has reprised her role as Suzy in My Name Is... for BBC Radio 4 and also played Josie, one of the titular cousins in BBC Radio 4 serial Rachel's Cousins. Her voice has graced TV adverts for Silverburn Shopping Centre and People Make Glasgow, animated shorts for Digital Preservation Europe and many local and national radio adverts in Scotland. Karen also performs as a member of Q Fusion Improv, as part of the sketch comedy shows Man vs. Woman and Alchemy and, in her spare time, Karen is quite literally a singer in a band with classic rock n'roll party band The Sentinels. Caroline Deyga Caroline trained at Napier & Queen Margaret Univerities, graduating in 2013 with a BA (Hons) Acting for Stage and Screen. Immediately after graduating she was picked for the graduate scheme at Dundee Rep, where productions included: Cars and Boys; And Then There Were None; The BFG; Hecuba; and Victoria. She also toured the one-woman show, The Shape of a Girl.

6 Caroline was part of the hugely successful Edinburgh Fringe 2015 hit, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour (National Theatre of Scotland), which enjoyed a sell out run at the Traverse Traverse and a sell out tour. The production won many awards including: a Fringe First, The Stage Award for Acting Excellence, a Herald Angel, and a Herald Little Devil. Caroline's other recent theatre credits include: The Fair Intellectual Club (Stellar Quines Theatre Company); Telling the Truth Beautifully and Greenvoe (both for St Magnus International Festival). Caroline's Film & TV credits include: Mr Nice (director Stuart McMahon) and The Fire (director Catriona Napier). Molly Innes Molly trained at RSAMD and has been an actor for over twenty years. During that time she has received a commendation at the Ian Charleson/National Theatre Awards, been nominated for a Stage Award for Acting Excellence and been nominated for a Best Actress CATS award. Molly is one of the Traverse Fifty writers and received a New Playwright s Award in She also directs. Kathryn Howden Kathryn trained at the Conservatoire of Scotland. She has performed in numerous theatre productions including The Slab Boys (Citizens Theatre/ Kings Theatre) and A Family Affair (Royal Lyceum Theatre Co). Throughout her career she has performed in a number of Traverse Theatre productions such as Any Given Day (Traverse Theatre), The Last Witch (Edinburgh International Festival/ Traverse) The Ballad Of Crazy Paola (Traverse Theatre), Bondagers (Traverse Theatre/ Donmar Warehouse/ Canada/ Budapest) The Hope Slide (Traverse Theatre), Buchanan (Traverse Theatre) and Poor Superman (Traverse/ Hampstead) Her television work includes Silent Witness - In a Lonely Place (BBC), Mountain Goats (BBC Scotland) and Taggart- Law (STV). She has also appeared in such films as God Help The Girl (Barry Mendel Productions) and The Priest And The Pirate (Pilton Video).