Children of Fate (Hechos Consumados). Juan Radrigan
includes Roger Michell’s production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet (Sir Richard Steele Theatre) and Keith Hack’s production of The Dance of Death starring Alan Bates and Frances de la Tour (Riverside Studios). Opera includes The Medium and The Lighthouse both by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (BAC). For ten years from 2000, Robert was the international Representative of the Chekhov Memorial Theatre in Taganrog, Chekhov’s birthplace.
Gillian Argo | Designer Gillian has just completed her fifth summer with Bard in the Botanics in Glasgow; this year she designed Othello and Much Ado About Nothing. Other recent productions include stage design for Snow White at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, adapting her set for Hairy Maclary and Friends for an Australian tour, scenic painting for short film In Extremis and prop making for Hickory and Dickory Dock. Most recently she was involved in creating The Embassy and Robert Shaw’s production of Tejas Verdes.
Anna Sbokou | Lighting Designer Anna studied MSc Light & Lighting at the Bartlett UCL and Theatre Production-PACE at Goldsmiths. Recent theatre productions include: A Thousand Miles of History (CFL Bussey); Burmese Days (59E59 New York); Hound of the Baskervilles – Live Radio Theatre (Theatro Technis); La Chunga (Church St Theatre & Phoenix Artists Club); Kafka vs Kafka & Project Snowflake (Brockley Jack Studio); HMS Pinafore (King’s Head Theatre); A Doll’s House (The Arcola & The Space); Golden Child, Tangent & 9:21 to Shrub Hill (New Diorama Theatre); Angela Unbound (Leicester Square Theatre); Miss Julie (Greenwich Playhouse); Paul McCartney is Dead (Camden People’s Theatre & The Rag Factory); Black Chiffon & Hippolytus (White Bear Theatre); A Resounding Tinkle & Shakespeare Inc (Rosemary Branch Theatre); Feathers (Etcetera Theatre) and others. Dance productions include: Birds for Revolution! 2011 (The Place) and she was the lead lighting designer for All City Dance Festival (The Shaw Theatre). Much-loved site-specific productions include: Kaspar by Peter Handke (Arch 6 Southwark Rail); Poe: Macabre Resurrections (St.Mary’s Church N16); Much Ado About Nothing & Othello (Lauderdale House Outdoors) and Summit Conference (Portland Place Mansion). In 2009 she was awarded Young Lighter of the Year by the Society of Light and Lighting. www.annasbokou.com
Jonathan Waller | Fight Director A Combat Teacher, Fight director and historical consultant for over twenty years. Currently teaching at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Rutgers University Acting BA course at Shakespeare’s Globe and frequently in Italy and Mexico. His work has involved him in television drama, documentary, commercials, for film and for the stage, with over seventy professional credits including work for Cheek By Jowl, The National Theatre, The Young Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe, including currently working on Mark Rylance’s Richard III that will soon be on Broadway. A researcher of historical cultures, behaviours and combative practices, is an archer and has ridden and fought with the weapons and armour of many periods and contributing research to the Royal Armouries museums and the Mary Rose Trust. He lectures and teaches historical combat styles across Europe, Japan and the USA and has had his research published.
Sarah Julie Pujol | Stage Manager Sarah Julie Pujol is a French freelance Stage Manager based in London. Her recent credits include touring Assistant Stage Manager for Robert Wilson’s The Old Woman, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe in UK, Italy and Greece; Company Stage Manager for XY by Papercut Theatre and Stage Manager for PEEP by Natural Shocks, both at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe; and Stage Manager for British Red Cross’ Dance: Make Your Move. She received a BA in Drama and Theatre from the University of Kent, and aspires to master in Stage and Production Management in the next couple of years.
Holly Sharp | Assistant Director Holly Sharp completed an MA Text and Performance from RADA and Birkbeck, University of London in 2012. She previously spent two years working in Hong Kong as a Speech and Drama tutor at The Brandon Centre and as a drama, voice and scriptwriting facilitator at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is currently Literary Manager at The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton. Credits whilst studying include; Nil by Mouth, (as director) and L’Amour/Le Mort, (as co-director and dramaturg).
Danny West (Producer) Danny West graduated from Central School of Speech and Drama in 2012, there he specialised in producing and directing for the stage. As Producer: Executed for Sodomy: The Life Story of Caterina Linck (The Last Refuge & C Venues) Back to School (Pleasance, Edinburgh) The Shift (Various Locations) Accidental Festival (Roundhouse). As Director: Starship Coagulese by Ben Coren (Southwark Playhouse), Off-Grid by Kent DePinto (Theatre503), How Many Milimetres to Mars? (Roundhouse) and Seventh & Ninth Continent (DISK Theatre, Prague and Roundhouse).
Jade Desumala | Social Media and Community Manager Jade Desumala studied at Goldsmiths in New Cross and has recently completed a Masters degree in Cultural and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Jade’s passions and interests include cinema, Twitter, electronic music – and of course – theatre. When not working for Inside Intelligence Jade works in digital marketing for a contemporary art company based in Silicon Roundabout.
Sarah Crocker | Assistant Lighting Designer Sarah began working in lighting design following an MA at Goldsmiths in Postcolonial Theory. She has been involved in projects spanning theatre, exhibitions and dance, with most recent venues including the New Diorama, The Rose Bankside, Tristan Bates and Greenwich Dance.
FOR THE BUSSEY BUILDING Mickey Smith | Executive Creative Director Saija Kamarainen | Operations Manager Lucca Joy Barratt | Personal Assistant to the Executive Creative Director Martin Drogosz | In House Promotions
The CLF Art Cafe AKA the Bussey Building is 120 year old multi-level Warehouse space, hosting leading events in music, theatre, film, anime, art, comedy and more. Grass roots to cutting edge – Bestival to Secret Sundaze, The South London Soul to Train to The Royal Court Theatre, The Jungle Brothers to Adamski via MJ Cole and Roa + Phlegm Art Exhibitions. The list goes on and on.
A Note on Children of Fate
Juan Radrigán is a phenomenon. Born the son of an itinerant mechanic and a teacher, as a child he would travel with his family from settlement to settlement in search of work. As soon as his father had serviced all the farm machines in one place, they moved onto the next. Juan never went to school. Everything he learned as a child, he taught himself or he learned it from his mother. Now he is a professor of Drama at Santiago University.
His early plays reflect his background. Many of them are about people born into, or fallen into, grinding poverty. Or they are about those forced live on the margins in other ways or for other reasons.
Children of Fate (Hechos Consumados) is one his earliest plays; it was first performed in 1981. It has come to be seen as his greatest play. Perhaps this is because its themes of poverty, struggle to survive against the odds and love are both timeless and also deeply relevant to the period in which the play emerged.
Poverty, lack of education and lack of opportunity existed in Chile long before the brutal military coup that brought General Pinochet to power in 1973. Pinochet found new ways to make them worse.
Pinochet was a soldier, not a politician. He knew he hated Salvador Allende, the world’s first, and so far only, democratically elected Marxist leader. But he also knew that he didn’t have detailed policies of his own.
It so happened that many young Chileans had studied Economics at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman. Friedman’s theories came to greater prominence nearly a decade later when they were espoused by Ronald Reagan in the US, rebranded as Reaganomics, and by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and called Thatcherism.
Friedman’s Chilean acolytes became known in Chile – still are known – as the Chicago Boys. After Pinochet’s coup, Chile’s economic management