Spring Forward

The five plays are:

Lynndie’s Gotta Gun by Enda Walsh. Directed by Flavia Di Saverio
A man finds himself abducted and interrogated by a woman in a clown costume.
Enda Walsh’s Lynndie’s Gotta Gun is subtitled ‘A play for former US soldier Private Lynndie England’. England is a former US Army Reserve Soldier, who was sentenced to three years in prison for her involvement in the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, where prisoners of war were tortured and abused.

Two Billion Beats by Sonali Bhattacharyya. Directed by Olivia Chakraborty
Sonali Bhattacharyya’s play is an insightful, heartfelt coming-of-age story and a blazing account of inner-city, British-Asian teenage life. Seventeen-year-old Asha is a rebel, inspired by historical revolutionaries and unafraid of pointing out the hypocrisy around her – but less sure how to actually dismantle it. Her younger sister, Bettina, wide-eyed and naive, is just trying to get through the school day without having her pocket money nicked.
With essays to write, homework to do, and bus journeys home, the two sisters meet every afternoon, outside the school gates, to tackle the injustice of the world.

Distant Early Warning by Tatty Hennessy. Directed by Feiyang Yang
Set in 2053 in what was once Greenland, the play explores human relationships both on a large scale and with the ones we love and protect. Distant Early Warning (DEW) is a system of radar stations set up and operated during the Cold War by the US, Canada, Greenland and Iceland, to detect incoming bombers of the Soviet Union. The reference to DEW line draws a parallel surreal theme of people fighting each other from a hundred years ago (and of course much longer than that) all the way till the “end of the world”, which doesn’t look exactly as distant.

That Almost Unnameable Lust by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Directed by Rosie Barwick
“Are you rehabilitated?” they ask. No. I’m just a lot tireder than when I came in.”
Inside a women’s prison, two women serving life sentences are taking workshops with a writer who is researching for her next book. Slowly and fumblingly, the writer begins to understand the complexities of why women kill, and the whether incarcerating traumatised people really leads to rehabilitation.

Tituba by Winsome Pinnock. Directed by Anna Lindén
Tituba is a short one-woman play written by contemporary British playwright Winsome Pinnock. Tituba, an enslaved woman thought to be originally from Barbados, was the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. This is a remarkable short play exploring some of the facets of her equally remarkable story.