Soi Disant, by Marilyn Ricci. Development week 23-27th November 2015)

Ten days before the Allied liberation of Brussels in 1944, Alfred Adler, a German Jew, is passing as an Afrikaans businessman trading with the Nazis. He hasn’t managed, however, to get ‘Soi Disant’ (so-called) removed from his papers. Despite this, he’s hiding another Jew and anti-semitic Belgian Nationalists on the third floor of his house, renting the second floor to disillusioned Gestapo people whilst running guns and information to the Belgian Resistance. Denounced as a collaborator when the Brits arrive he’s jailed but still can’t reveal his true identity – all Germans, including Jews, are being rounded up because Jewish collaboration was not unknown. Will he escape the death penalty?

MARILYN RICCI: Her short play Sixteen about Somali refugees was given a rehearsed reading at the Royal & Derngate (2009) and selected for a reading at The Old Queen’s Head, Islington in 2010. Her first full length play, also set around the civil war in Somalia (The Road From Baardheere), had a reading as part of the TWP Momentum Festival at Curve, Leicester in 2010 and at the Guildhall Theatre, Derby in September 2011. She was one of the two writers on Kali Theatre’s Shared Memories project in 2012 and won the New Perspectives Dream Up competition in 2013.

The cast for the script development week and sharing are:

Toby Bradford (Naujocks)

Toby is a versatile actor and writer who has appeared in feature films, short films, TV and on the stage, with highlights including a five-star sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as John Worthing (Jack or Ernest) in the Wildean sequel In A Handbag Darkly. His pantomimes are performed across the world (well, the UK, France and Canada at last count).

Jim Findley (Alfred Adler)

Jim’s recent work in Leicester includes Inside Out Of Mind and Gulliver’s Travels. He has  just appeared in The Duchess of Malfi at Nottingham Playhouse. His other work there includes: Of Mice and Men,Tom’s Midnight Garden, Under the Story Tree, and Moon On A Rainbow Shawl. Other Theatre work includes: Brecht’s Mr Puntila and his Man Matti for Almeida, Watership Down for Lyric, Hammersmith, The Ghost Downstairs and Moll Cutpurse for New Perspectives, A River Sutra at Three Mills, and Playboy of the West Indies for Oxford Playhouse/Tricycle Theatre. He co- adapted and performed V.S Naipaul’s novel Miguel Street as a one-man show for Edinburgh’s Theatre Workshop, Latchmere and Andrew’s Lane, Dublin. T.V. includes: Silent Witness, Doctors, EastEnders, Resurrection Of The Daleks, and Johnny Jarvis. Film includes: Cry Freedom, Socrates and Playing Away. Radio includes: Poetry Please, Silver Street, The Year In San Fernando and The Painterboy of Demerara. Jim is a student of Yoshinkan Aikido, and also coaches Youth soccer for the FA.

Kitty Randle (Margarete/Helene/Frau Lanken)

Kitty is an actor, movement director and co-founder and core artist of Moving Stories Theatre Company. Most recently she has just completed filming on a feature length film ‘Blackout’ and is part of the creative team working on the research and development for the ‘GBS Project’. As an actor her credits include: Flea in Arletty Theatre Company’s ‘The Unfurling of Indigo Higgins’ (for which she was nominated for Best Actor at the Buxton Fringe Festival), Chief in Babbling Vagabonds’s production of ‘Naughty Meg’ at Derby Live, Jax in the research and development piece ‘Something Blue’ and Vanessa Bell for Moving Stories ‘Vanessa and Virginia’ (Riverside Studios London and international tour). Her other acting credits include Christmas Tree in ‘The Christmas Chocolate Shop’, Mrs. Usher / Annie Besant in ‘Sweet Comradeship’, Electra in ‘Orestes: Re-Examined’ at the Southwark Playhouse, Violet in ‘Heresies’ (Bristol Old Vic Studio), Ophelia in ‘Hamlet ‘(Bath Shakespeare Festival and the Minack Theatre), Susanna Walcott in ‘The Crucible’ (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield) Praying Girl in Iphigenia (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield).  TV credits include Emmerdale and KFC ‘The Taste That Unites’ advert.

As a Movement Director Kitty’s credits include work across a variety of productions and genres. These include Movement Direction and Choreography for Moving Stories recent ‘Midsummer Nights Dream – A Power Nap’ at the Southbank Centre and their production of ‘The Tempest’ and the award winning production of ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Minack Theatre. Other Movement Direction credits include ‘Cornerstones’ at Dublin’s Smock Alley, ‘ The Christmas Chocolate Shop’ at Derby Live, ‘Mobile Phone Show’ for the NT Connections programme, ‘Arabian Nights’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Macbeth’, ‘Orestes: Re-Examined’, ‘Into the Woods’, ‘Oh What a Lovely War’, ‘Heresies’.

Sam Warren (Schumann/Dobbs/Harry)

Sam recently graduated from Drama Centre London.
His theatre credits include: The Session (Soho Theatre); Vessel (Curve, Leicester/New Diorama Theatre, London); Due Course (New Perspectives Theatre Company); The Comedy of Errors (Nottingham New Theatre/Fine Frenzy Theatre); The Cherry Orchard andThree Sisters (Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute, Moscow); Sweeney Todd and Little Shop of Horrors (Nottingham Lakeside Arts). Theatre whilst at Drama Centre London: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Orestes, Time and the Conways, Rocket to the Moon and She Stoops to Conquer. For further information, please visit www.keddiescott.com