​Alexander Knott is a South London based, Off West End Award winning theatre maker who works as a writer, director and creative producer. He has written and directed plays at the Bristol Old Vic, The Barn Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, 53Two Manchester, the Underbelly Edinburgh, the Old Red Lion Theatre and numerous venues across London. 

His reimagining of ‘Private Peaceful’ won the 2022 Off West End Award for Theatre for Young People, Families and Those with Special Needs. His work has been nominated for multiple other Off West End Awards, LPT Standing Ovation Awards and Off West End commendations. 

He was Artistic Director of the historic Old Red Lion Theatre between 2019 - 2021 and is Joint Director of theatre collective Bag of Beard. He has been Resident Writer for BoxLess Theatre since 2016.

His plays include: Loop (BoxLess, Theatre Royal Stratford East, national tour & Edinburgh Fringe), Bath (Bag of Beard, The Bread & Roses Theatre), Blue Blue (WoLab, Kings Head Theatre), Brenda from UKIP (Proforca, The Space/Lion & Unicorn), Renaissance Men (Joint Writer/Dramaturg, Old Red Lion/Square Chapel Arts Centre & northern tour), Hedgehog (BoxLess, Lion & Unicorn Theatre), At Last (Joint Writer, Proforca, Lion & Unicorn and tour), Nothing Between Friends (Joint Writer, West Avenue, Waterloo East Theatre), Yesterday’s Dreams (Katzpace), December - A New Play for Christmas (Old Red Lion Theatre), Cratchit (Park Theatre).

He is 2022 Associate of New York/Chicago playwrighting studio collective, Telling Humans. 

In Autumn 2022, his new play ‘Ballooniana!’ will launch the New Wimbledon Theatre’s Premieres season of new writing. 

​We are very excited to welcome Alex to our small team and know that he will bring invaluable experience and energy to The Bread & Roses Theatre!

​The play “Love in the Time of Lockdown” was created during the lockdown of February 2021. I was taking part in “The Literal Challenge” where you write a short play every day for a whole month. This challenge comes highly recommended to those writers who believe in the mantra: Don’t get it right, get it written! You can edit afterwards. At the same time, many of my friends were struggling with being alone at home or not finding any time to themselves. Others were desperate to date again, afraid of the vaccination or even considering suicide. The mental health toll of the lockdown turned out to be immense. While these worries filled my every waking thoughts, it is not surprising they also showed up in my writing.

The resulting play is not all doom and gloom, some of the situations are absolutely hilarious, too. When you miss your lover, perhaps your car can be a substitute. When someone finally touches you again after a year of lonesome dinners, you might fall instantly in love – even if it’s just the doctor giving you an injection. And how will poor Lady Macbeth cope with the ironing when she should be on stage at the National?!

It is with something like fondness that I think back to the first quarter of the pandemic (fondness behind anxiety and regret and horror, but fondness too, nonetheless). 
    I miss the gentle and naive optimism that caused people, in their collective consciousness, to become fascinated by the fact that Shakespeare had written King Lear during a period of quarantine. The ipso facto logic, you’ll remember, led everyone to the conclusion that pandemics are the ideal time to create a magnum opus, at most, and any piece of ambitious art that you had previously not had time to, at least.
        I admit that I too was swept up in the desperate rapids of wanting to create something worthwhile during the lockdowns. Wanting to write my King Lear. I had the benefit of having been gifted a project to work on just before the country closed down, too. I was asked by Sycamore Productions’ Will Charlton to write a play where characters are trapped on a train carriage on the London Underground. The idea excited me quite a bit, because as an avid avoider of the tube, I was eager to mine my nightmares for the feelings that might come if I was ever unexpectedly trapped down there among the dust and the mice.

We don’t believe journeys ever come to an end, they just change directions or split paths sometimes. Our Co-Founder Tessa’s time has come now to split paths with the wonderful endeavour of The Bread & Roses Theatre for good. Having left the UK exactly 4 years ago and stepped down as the theatre’s Artistic Director, Tessa stayed on as an Executive Director and there was much to manage for the theatre to make it through Covid-closures and what not. Our journey with trying out the space and how we could work together as people (or not) started 10 years ago in 2012, the theatre then officially opened in 2014.

‘Co-Founding this theatre, serving as its Co-Director, growing with this project for about a decade, has been a life-changing and life-shaping journey.’

Now it’s time to cherish the journey travelled together and the many journeys ahead, as Tessa bids farewell fully and also steps down as Executive Director and company owner. The theatre remains in the most incredible and capable hands, of course, of Co-Founder & Managing Director Rebecca Pryle, Artistic Director since 2018 Velenzia Spearpoint and the whole ever-growing theatre team and community.

And, if you fancy saying “hi” and/or “bye”, come join us on Tuesday 29th March at 5:30pm for a final farewell get-together, as it’ll also be Tessa’s first actual visit since 2019! ​(Current in-house production Who You Are and What You Do is also on at 7:30pm that day, if you fancy catching that too, whilst you’re there.)

When a fashionable movie star is kidnapped by a mysterious stalker, he must learn how to negotiate his way out of imprisonment using all his skills and cunning.

Opening later this month, we spoke with Lesley Ann Albiston the writer and director of Chop Me Up Or Let Me Go about her dark comedy with a twist. 

 What inspired you to create this show? Why this story?
During the first lockdown people used it as an opportunity to be fully creative, some built robots out of household appliances, some searched the night sky for aliens who might offer a way off this pandemic-soaked planet, and I wrote a play about being trapped. Because I was trapped. A bit obvious really in retrospect. Luckily, it’s getting to be performed and appreciated.

Who are the collaborators on this production?
Firstly, I cast Alastair Coughlan, a brand-new shiny actor musician, fresh from training in New York Drama school in the main role of kidnapped famous actor Tom Reynolds, when I only had an early draft, then I sort-of built the rest of play around the Alastair’s incredible skill set. It took us a while to find a female actor who could match his dramatic/comedic performance whilst portraying Astrid Barton, a slightly unhinged stalker turned kidnapper, but much to our delight we found the striking actor dancer Ciara Murphy not long after graduating from ALRA. She inspired me to develop the character of Astrid away from being just another crazy stalker into someone a little more real. Astrid is still bonkers though. Adorable but bonkers. You must be to do what she does in the play…

Ahead of Acquah&Co's run of SANKOFA at The Bread & Roses Theatre this February, Nicole Acquah talks us through her top tips for creating autobiographical theatre...

Sankofa is a semi-autobiographical piece of theatre, recently shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting. It is about my heritage as a Ghanaian-British woman, and how I found out in only the last few years that I come from a long line of artists. The show explores how this discovery impacted the way I see myself and explores my experiences as a West African woman making work, falling in love, uncovering my personal history…all that fun stuff. I am performing onstage alongside musicians Vanessa Garber and Doyin Ade. It is directed by Carol Leeming MBE and produced by Tia Ray, with voice and dialect by Eleanor Manners and movement direction by Kwame Asafo-Adjei. In addition to writing, I perform in the piece. 
Here are some of the things that this process has helped me reflect upon and hopefully some tips to take away for your own shows:  

What inspired you to create this show? Why this story?
​I had felt stuck in the creative doldrums for quite a while when the pandemic began. It had been a few years since I had last made a play, and while I knew in my heart of hearts it was what I wanted to do, life had kinda got in the way. Being stuck at home in lockdown gave me time to re-evaluate that I had evaded playwriting for fear of failing, but wasn’t doing particularly well at the career I’d chosen instead. So I quit my cushy work-from-home job mid-lockdown and decided to write something about artists who create knowing they most likely won’t be successes - and what that does to their motivation. In a lot of ways, it was a means for me to ask myself, ‘am I willing to do this even if it fails?’

Who should see this show & why?
Anyone who’s ever tried to make something despite the odds! The story focuses on a group of artists facing different internal and external gatekeepers - from a trans character wanting to break free of stereotypes, to a Dutch character wondering how long he can stay in the UK. I think anyone can find something of themselves in the characters. 

​Have there been any obstacles in the creation of 'Road to Nowhere'?
​We had a month where we couldn’t rehearse due to cast members almost taking it in turns to test positive with the Omicron variant. It’s definitely pushed up our blood pressure to know we’re inching towards opening night and haven’t been in a room together for the entirety of December. Thankfully, rehearsals are back on track now! 

'What is it like to be stabbed in the back; to constantly experience subtle prejudice; to be capable but feel powerless?'
We sat down with Farine Clarke, writer of London Zoo to find out more about her play which explores the characters surrounding the newspaper industry at the turn of the millennium.
​
What inspired you to write this play?  
Subtext! I’ve always been interested in the difference between what people say and what they really think. We’re sociable animals so brutal honesty can be damaging and hurtful; often it’s kinder not to voice our inner thoughts. But when our ‘harmless’ words mask ingrained prejudice, then that’s more sinister. I was a doctor and then worked in business at a senior level and in both I witnessed situations where the spoken word masked the inner thought. I love using humour to draw attention to the ‘thought conversation’. However tragic it can be, it’s also funny and ironic, and just makes people smile and think, ‘yes’.  This dichotomy applies in so many different situations that it resonates with us all.

You wrote this play many years ago. Why stage it now?   
My biggest concern was that it would be out of date. London Zoo is about the balance of power in the workplace and prejudicial layers, not just sexual or racial but between races and against ‘perceived weakness’. Over ten years later, when Sassy and Velenzia at The Bread and Roses invited me into their Playwrights’ Circle to have a scene read, I was convinced things had moved on. I’ll never forget the first piece of feedback from one of the contributors who said, “There’s good and bad. The good is it’s really funny and the bad is, nothing’s changed.” That really shocked me and getting it staged became a bit of a mission! Sassy put me in touch with Samantha Pears (our director) and here we are! 

You describe the play as a ‘pacey parody of life’; what do audiences have to look forward to?   
If the feedback from the rehearsed reading we held on Zoom in February is anything to go by, I think audiences will enjoy it, find it funny, and also recognise that in life you just can’t make it up. Lots of people have said it ‘chimed’ with them and that’s important. It’s satirical but it does have an edge which can be slightly uncomfortable. It also has a fantastical ending which everyone says they didn’t see coming. I hope the audience leaves  feeling they’ve seen a stimulating as well as entertaining play.