VIENNA’s ENGLISH THEATRE
Starring Xena Bassel and Tom Stuttard
Directed by Adrienne Ferguson
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FOR TICKETS and FURTHER INFORMATION:
From the Director . . .
What a great pleasure it is to explore this play with VETA Graduates Xena Bassel and Tom Stuttard, two young actors that I have worked so closely with as a practitioner, mentor and friend throughout the past few years.
I AND YOU is a story that belongs to the spirit of youth. It is a tribute to the way the young can be so fully immersed in the present tense that they can hardly see outside the present moment, and at the same time they are acutely aware of the myriad possibilities, and the daunting probabilities, of the future. This knowledge can both excite and overwhelm, leading to a search for outlets to express these conflicting emotions sparking both amazing creativity and passion, alongside intense existentialism and anxiety.
At the end of the day what these young people need is to be seen and understood in a way that the adults in their lives, surrounded by their own realities, can rarely fulfil. In I AND YOU the playwright, Laura Gunderson, gives her teenage characters a chance to be seen and heard by someone, a peer, who understands without judgement and does not feel the need to “fix”. This open acceptance, taking each other at face value, instead allows them to open up and consequently to begin to heal.
Laura Gunderson wanted to write this play as a benediction; something that promotes goodness or wellbeing, a sacred ceremony. She writes in her author’s notes, “I hope (the play) asks you, like any good benediction, to take what you experienced back out into the world. To use it… Theatre wants us to take the play outside of the theatre. Go outside. Go in peace. Go in art. Go in poetry. Go. Go.”
— Adrienne Ferguson