David R. Gammons (Scenic Designer) Previous Central Square Theatre scenic design: Vanity Fair (2020 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Design). David is a director, designer, visual artist, and theatre educator, and enjoys working with bold and adventurous collaborators.  His design work has been seen in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and abroad with Arlekin Players, The Poets’ Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, The New Rep, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, and many others.  He is a three-time winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director. Please visit davidrgammons.com.

Playwright Caryl Churchill was born on 3 September 1938 in London and grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read English. Downstairs, her first play, was written while she was still at university, and was first staged in 1958, winning an award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick (1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge’s Wife was televised by the BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year.

She was Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working with the theatre groups ‘Joint Stock’ and ‘Monstrous Regiment’. Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds (1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980.

Top Girls (1982) brings together five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant given by Marlene, the new managing director of ‘Top Girls’ employment agency. The play was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, and transferred to Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in 1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker (1994). Her plays for television include The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of Seneca’s Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses the subject of human cloning. Her new version of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005. Her plays since then have included Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (2009), Love and Information (2012), Ding Dong the Wicked (2013), Here We Go (2015) and Escaped Alone (2016).

Caryl Churchill lives in London.

Nick was born in Portsmouth, England, and grew up along the coast in Southampton. In 1977 he graduated from the University of Essex with a BA in Comparative European Literature.

Whilst at Essex, Nick became interested in theatre, beginning with a career-defining role as the Second Murderer in Macbeth. He soon realised he was not going to be an actor, and by the time he left Essex, he had written his first play.

Between 1978 and 1986 he lived in Yorkshire, where he held down a variety of unlikely jobs whilst embarking on a series of plays for BBC Radio, and early outings in the theatre.

He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Essex in 1985, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 1987-8.

His breakthrough came in 1986 with the production of The Art of Success at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Subsequently he has sustained a full-time career as a playwright and screenwriter.

Nick’s work has been directed by, amongst others, Danny Boyle, Declan Donnellan, Adrian Noble, Lindsay Posner, Trevor Nunn, Roger Michel, Richard Eyre, and Richard Jones.

In 1991-2 he was attached to Peter Brook’s C.I.C.T. Company in Paris. They collaborated on Brook’s production of Qui est lá? (Bouffes du Nord, Paris, 1996).

In 1995 his first film for TV, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, won a BAFTA award, and was subsequently screened in cinemas around the world.

His adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle at the National Theatre, became one of the first successes of NT Live, and has since been seen by a vast audience internationally.

In 2003 he began a series of adaptations for ITV of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. His scripts for the show include “The Hollow”, “Cards on the Table”, “Mrs McGinty’s Dead”, “Three Act Tragedy”, “Elephants Can Remember and Dead Man’s Folly”. “Dead Man’s Folly” was the last Poirot to be shot with David Suchet in the title role, filmed at Christie’s own house ‘Greenway’ in Devon.

Nick lives in London with his wife, Penny Downie.

April 2018.

Christine Power (Antonia Maury) is pleased to be making her debut with The Nora. Recent local credits include Lost Girls (Take Your Pick Productions), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (SpeakEasy Stage), Barbecue (Lyric Stage), Faithless (Boston Playwrights’ Theater), Good; Three Viewings (New Rep), A Great Wilderness; Good Television (Zeitgeist Stage), Six Degrees of Separation (Bad Habit Productions), Equus (Off the Grid), Greenland (Apollinaire – IRNE nomination Best Supporting Actress), Chalk (Fresh Ink Theater), In the Summer House (Fort Point Theater Channel), The Miracle Worker (Wheelock Family Theater), Neighbors (Company One – Norton nomination Outstanding Actress). New work development with Speakeasy’s Boston Project; New Rep Next Voices;  Boston Playwrights’ Theater; The Nora; Fresh Ink’s Ink Spots; Rhombus Playwrights’ Group; Grub Street.

Becca A. Lewis (Williamina Fleming) is pleased to have her Central Square Theater debut with the Nora after The Women Who Mapped the Stars workshop performance last spring. Becca co-created and performs in The Pineapple Project with Queer Soup, an original piece for kids celebrating gender diversity (PineappleProject.org). Additional credits include: Charlotte’s Web (Wheelock Family Theatre), Revolt. She said. Revolt again (Dig Boston’s Best Performance), Splendor (IRNE nomination Best New Play), GRIMM (IRNE Supporting Actress), Voyeurs de Venus (Elliot Norton nomination Outstanding Production, Company One), The Big Meal (Elliot Norton nomination Outstanding Actress, Ensemble), Tigers Be Still (Elliot Norton nomination Outstanding Actress, Production), My Wonderful Day (Elliot Norton nomination Outstanding Production), Enron (Zeitgeist Stage), Three Sisters, Informed Consent, The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, Detroit, (Apollinaire Theatre Company), A Behanding in Spokane (Elliot Norton Nomination Outstanding Production, Theatre on Fire), Far Away, Vinegar Tom, Fen (Whistler in the Dark). It is rare that one gets the opportunity to inhabit a soul whose life’s work took place in such close proximity and whose bones are at rest down the road in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Becca is grateful to be trusted with the task of honoring the legacy of Williamina Fleming as well as the legacies of all of these brilliant women. Thank you for listening to their story.

April 2018