Two new plays exploring global questions of truth, corruption and freedom will be features of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s month-long The Other Place Spring Mischief Festival.
Led by deputy artistic director Erica Whyman, the festival will include #WeAreArrested, the true story of journalist Can Dündar’s commitment to expose the truth in the face of huge personal risk, and Day of the Living, inspired by events in Ayotzinapa, Mexico in 2014 when 43 students were forcibly taken and disappeared.
Dündar’s book #WeAreArrested documents his account of receiving a critical piece of evidence confirming the illegal shipment of weapons to Syria by the Turkish government, his newspaper's decision to publish that evidence and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment.
RSC literary manager Pippa Hill and freelance director, writer and script editor Sophie Ivatts have adapted the book into the play which Ivatts directs.
Created by Darren Clark, Amy Draper and Juliet Gilkes Romero, Day of the Living is a “devised anarchic, musical tribute to life and the Mexican spirit with urgent, global issues at its heart”.
#WeAreArrested and Day of the Living play as a double bill in The Other Place, Stratford from Thursday 31 May until Saturday 23 June.
The festival will also include Nell Leyshon’s Three Letters, her own story of how her reinvention of herself after becoming a mother is halted by illness. She will perform it on Wednesday 6 and Friday 8 June.
The RSC is also allowing theatregoers to see a work-in-progress reading on Friday 22 June of Redefining Juliet, a “frank and feisty re-telling of the greatest love story of all time, casting six diverse Juliets”.