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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Reminder to get writing: The Adrian Pagan Award 2016


The Adrian Pagan award is back for a third year. If you think you’ve got what it takes to address the state of the nation rather than reading random blogs on the interwebs, then this might be for you.

The King’s Head are looking for directors, producers and creative teams to pitch plays that capture the current mood in an exciting, thought-provoking and entertaining way. Other than that, anything goes - new writing, revivals and musicals... They will take anything that pokes them the right way.

The winning company will receive a full King’s Head production budget to produce their show at the venue.

Applications are open until 31 July. To enter, you need to download an application from the King’s Head website and it by the deadline.


Shortlisted entrants will be invited to pitch to a panel of industry professionals in September.

Adrian Pagan was a stage manager for ten years before his first play, The Backroom, won the Verity Bargate award and was produced by the Bush Theatre. The award was set up following his tragic death at the age of 39. The first winner of the 2014 award was Thomas Pickles’ Dead Party Animals.

The second winner, in 2015, was Kate Lock’s Russian Dolls which recently concluded a run at the King’s Head (5th - 23rd April 2016).

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