Latest News:
We recently enjoyed great success with Love, Question Mark!
Which was performed at The New Diorama Theatre, from 6th April - 1st May 2010.
"Love, Question Mark is a brilliant piece with which to open the New Diorama Theatre. Robert Gillespie has cleverly penned a contemplative piece that throws up resounding, trans-generational issues about relationships and loneliness...A stand-out performance by Clare Cameron." - Spoonfed.
"Fast-paced and very funny...A sharp and witty show, deftly directed by Gillespie...Wonderfully performed by Stuart Sessions and Clare Cameron. It challenges us to be curious about our ideas of love, and to look for our own truth." - British Theatre Guide.
“Gillespie’s new play challenges us to think outside the box...The writing which teeters into black comedy is witty, acerbic with lots of brilliant one liners, many with a wealth of meaning behind them.” - ThePublicReviews.com.
Jane Nightwork presents:
POWER OF THREE: Love, War and Death
Written and directed by Robert Gillespie
Play One: Love, Question Mark
"Man cannot stand too much reality" – T.S. Eliot/Carl Jung
A local Nigerian chief with eighty-six wives was warned by the government that if he didn’t cut it down to three he would risk execution.
Michael Smith, estate agent (retired), is not in this league. A widower, he’s looking forward to his daily crossword and the occasional trip to the library, when all at once he is shaken to his foundations by a happening - a vision - on a bus.
Disturbed and anxious, he’s waiting for the outcome of an impulse. Perhaps sticking a pin in a list to find a partner is not such a crazy idea? Then there’s a knock at the door...
Writer-director Robert Gillespie explores the curious gap between what we say we want and what we actually do. He has written a fascinating piece here, where he explains what inspired him to write the play. And photographs from the production can be viewed here.
Theatre Voice have also recently interviewed Robert, and you can listen to the interview on their site here.
Cast: Clare Cameron, Stuart Sessions.
Design: Mamoru Iriguchi (2009 Evening Standard award, Mincemeat) and Maria Garcia.
Lighting Design: Neil E. Hobbs.
Produced by Lucy Jackson.
Mincemeat
And if you missed Robert Gillespie in Mincemeat you can check out the background story at: http://www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk/, and the reviews linked below this image. We hear there's a move to bring the show back - and will post further news here as soon as we have it. 
Mincemeat is the story of a nobody who became a somebody, and in doing so changed the course of the Second World War.
The true story behind The Man Who Never Was; a site specific promenade performance through a re-imagined wartime London.
Cardboard Citizens’ new production was performed by a professional cast including ex-homeless actors. Mincemeat is the first in a three year cycle of plays about forgotten histories, all based on real events in which an ordinary person affects the bigger sweep of history.
More information, along with very positive reviews from The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Telegraph, can be found here.
Simone de Beauvoir, author of THE SECOND SEX and partner of Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote a fascinating play while she endured Nazi occupation in Paris. In association with the National Theatre Studio, we ran an intensive two-day workshop of the play, with a view to a full production.
For further information click here.
Our Reading Of
went extremely well, and we received this response from John Theocharis, a former BBC Radio Drama Producer.
"Most enjoyable. Most entertaining. Well-made, intriguing, eloquent. The text sounds appropriately literate, but also natural and convincing. Attractively and wittily performed, even as a reading. A nicely paced one too. Just a few belly laughs, but lots of amused faces in the audience smiling and laughing noiselessly throughout it. Charmingly wordy, but I'm sure it can be shortened for a stage performance to good effect and without loss of substance, or indeed charm. Quite a feat, eventually, for the actors to memorise all those long speeches. It should work on the airwaves too, but it may have to be compressed so drastically that some of its essential flavour may be lost, and its credibility weakened. Many thanks for inviting me. So glad I came."
Further information about Chains can be found here.
For more information on our previous productions, including Golden Opportunities, Making Dickie Happy, Sex, Death and A Baked Swan, and Oedipus: A Double Bill, please click here.
Previous Productions
For further information on our previous productions, please click on the appropriate link.
Chains
Golden Opportunities
Sex, Death and A Baked Swan
Making Dickie Happy
Passion Play
Oleanna
My Heart
Recollections by Robert Gillespie
The Royal Shakespeare Company's U.S. Tour - Robert's Diary.
Previous Recollections:
Directing Tennessee Williams Period of Adjustment
Hamlet - the Old Vic, 1954, Assembly Hall, Edin. Festival
Peter Howell talks about Olivier's Richard III in WW2 London
The Old Vic, 1953/4 - Michael Hordern's Malvolio
**
Doctor Theatre - A Giggle Before You Go
Click above to see video clips from Keep It In The Family, the sitcom written for Robert by Brian Cooke, and other tv series that he has appeared in.