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Winner of the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Fringe Award
By Henry Naylor
Directed by Louise Skaaning and Michael Cabot

June 27, 2018—July 22, 2018

BORDERS runs approximately 70 minutes with no intermission
Read Synopsis

Inspired by encounters with refugees, BORDERS is an urgent, moving and occasionally hilarious commentary on one of the great crises of our time.

Through two alternating monologues, BORDERS tells the stories of a British press photographer and a Syrian graffiti artist, whose paths cross in tragic circumstances.

Written by the multi-award winning Englishman Henry Naylor, (whom the London Times described as ‘one of our best new playwrights’) the show was one of the biggest hits of the Edinburgh Festival selling out its entire run and accumulating an astonishing 19 five- and four-star reviews and the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award.

Boldly directly by Louise Skaaning and Michael Cabot, it’s fast-paced, stripped-back theatre which conveys a huge and epic story using just two superlative actors, simple lighting and a couple of stools.

When BORDERS won the Scotsman’s Fringe First, Naylor became one of just a handful of writers to have won the leading award three times.

Featuring Avital Lvova (as Nameless) and Graham O’Mara (as Sebastian Nightingale)

CREATIVE / CAST

  • Graham O'Mara

    Sebastian Nightingale

    Recent theatre credits include: BU21 (Trafalgar Studios), Punts (Theatre 503), Carry On Jaywick (Hightide, Vaults, Essex tour), Fatzer: Downfall Of An Egoist (North Wall Arts Centre), BU21 (Theatre 503), Horniman’s Choice (Finborough), Romeo & Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Wind in the Willows (Chester), Sense and Sensibility (The Watermill Theatre), Cans (Theatre 503), Othello/A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chester), Hindle Wakes (Finborough), Government Inspector (Young Vic), Alice (Sheffield Crucible), Pedal Pusher and The Winter’s Tale (Theatre Delicatessen), Food (Traverse/B.A.C./U.K. Tour – Fringe First Winner), David Copperfield (Eastern Angles UK Tour), A Man of Letters (Orange Tree), The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds), Romeo & Juliet (Wylde Thyme UK Tour), Emma (Good Company UK Tour), The Three Musketeers (Young Vic).
Television credits include; “Doctors” (BBC), “Friday Night Dinner” (Channel 4), “Good Cop” (BBC), “Naked Apes” (Daybreak Pictures), “The Queen: 1974” (Blast Films), “Waterloo Rd” (BBC), “Casualty” (BBC), “Silent Witness” (BBC).

  • Avital Lvova

    Nameless

    Avital began her career by touring the world in legendary choreographer Constanza Marcas’ Hell on Earth (Winner of the Goethe-Institute Prize for Best Theatre). Her screen debut soon followed, in Silver-Lion-Winner Bahtiar Khudoynazarov’s Waiting for the Sea. After training at London’s East 15, Avital starred in Secret Cinema’s immersive Doctor Strangelove, played Queen Margaret in the acclaimed Richard III (Rosemary Branch), and co-wrote and starred in the Edinburgh hit Rebounding Hail. She won the Tom Bennett Comedy Award 2015, and more recently appeared as Lilia Butterworth in BBC1’s “Doctors.” Since January of 2017, she has been touring the world as Rehana in Naylor’s Angel. She helped the show win the overall Critics’ Choice Award at the Adelaide Fringe, was nominated for the Outstanding Performance Award at the Prague Fringe, and got spectacular reviews in New York at 59E59 Theaters. One critic even described her Rehana as ‘one of the most brilliant and harrowing performances this reviewer has ever witnessed.’ And after similarly excellent press for her month long-run at the Arcola Theatre in London, she was nominated for Best Actress in the Off West End Awards. She will appear in Naylor’s next play, Games at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh.

Henry Naylor / Playwright

Henry Naylor is a multi-award-winning UK playwright, who has been described as ‘one of our best new playwrights’ in The Times, ‘one of our best new playwrights’ in The Evening Standard, and ‘one of the finest British writers on contemporary events,’ in Theatre Extra. In the past 3½ years his plays have won, or been nominated for 35 international awards, including one of France’s most prestigious awards for the arts, the Globes De Cristal. In 2016, he joined J.K. Rowling in having written one of the 10 Best Plays Of The Year by The Times. He is one of only a handful of writers to have won the Fringe First three times, and has won four of the top five Fringe awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, including the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award. The one he hasn’t won – the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award – he’s been nominated for twice. Three of his plays have had month long runs Off-Broadway, and in 2017 alone there were over 300 public performances of his work, over five continents. His work has been translated into eight languages.

Louise Skaaning / Co-Director

Louise spends her working life between London and her native Denmark. She first trained at Scenekunst Academiet at the age of 21 specializing in physical theatre. In 2010 Louise took part in a project that toured across Syria, Lebanon and Georgia – the project was in the style of forum theatre. After moving to London in 2011, Louise then furthered her training at the prestigious East 15 Acting School. This led onto many projects, including assistant director of Hiraeth at Soho Theatre in London, as well as her debut play Chlorine in 2014, about a young woman’s journey through psychosis and eventual recovery. More recently she has directed the acclaimed Flew the Coop at the new Diorama theatre. And in Summer 2018 she will be directing Henry Naylor’s new play Games. At ease with both directing and acting, Louise is currently touring with a play in Denmark called Pudemin: a play aimed at younger audiences about confronting the fear of the unknown.

Michael Cabot / Co-Director

Michael is the founder and Artistic Director of London Classic Theatre, one of the UK’s leading touring theatre companies. Since 2000, its productions have played to over 500,000 people at more than 250 theatres in the UK & Ireland.
Michael has directed all 36 London Classic Theatre productions, including Hysteria, The Birthday Party, Absent Friends, Equus and Waiting for Godot. In Autumn 2017, he directed a major new touring production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. Borders is Michael’s third collaboration with Henry Naylor, having previously directed Angel (Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Brits off Broadway and Prague Fringe) and the 2016 UK Tour of The Collector for Kathryn Barker Productions.

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