New artistic director of the Gate Theatre Christopher Haydon this week announced his inaugural season at the small London venue.
Talking of the theatre's longstanding tradition of staging new theatre from around the globe, Haydon said, "we are a small theatre with a truly global outlook. And the events of this past year have shown that now, more than ever, we need to be looking at events beyond our borders.
"From the Occupy movements in the West, to the revolutionaries who have taken to the streets across the Middle East, people are fighting to imagine and forge a better world. I have always felt that theatre at its best provides the ideal space in which to explore difficult and contradictory ideas."
His theatrical response is a trio of works under the collective banner Resist! that look at themes of rebellion and revolution.
The season opens on 1 May with Grayscale Theatre's Tenet: A True Story About the Revolutionary Politics of Telling the Truth About Truth as Edited by Someone Who is Not Julian Assange in Any Literal Sense, directed by Lorne Campbell who co-wrote the piece with Sandy Grierson. It pairs up the nineteenth century French mathematician and political activist Evariste Galois and the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Following this in June, Haydon himself directs a new play about the current revolution in Egypt by Hassan Abdulrazzak called The Prophet.
The season ends with the world première of American playwright Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby, directed by newly-appointed associate artist Charlotte Westenra, which examines the fractured relationship between a young woman and her father, a former political prisoner and black revolutionary. Westenra is one of four new associate artists also announced this week, the others being Adam Brace, Oliver Townsend and Rachel Chavkin.
Public booking for the Resist! season opens on 27 February.