On Saturday 19th September, Upstart Theatre are returning to the Tristan Bates Theatre as part of Midnight Matinee with a labyrinthine installation piece devised by Tom Mansfield, Laura Casey, Kate McGregor and Dan Usztan. Come along and get lost in the maze…

They’d love to find out things you’ve lost – let them know here.

Doors open at 11.55 pm on Saturday 19th September; tickets £5 on the door.

This was a great night that I was a part of last time around. Go along and see it! Plus, it’s always interesting to go to the theatre at midnight!

Here’s what happened last time:

And here’s a fun clip from Trafalgar Square very late (or very early) after the last Midnight Matinee:

And later still…

The image on the left is taken from Time Out London (June 25th – July 1st 2009) and features a photo of yours truly along with a glowing recommendation from their reviewer Andrew. To view the image full size and to zoom in on it, simply click the image.

Andrew also wrote a lovely review of the show which you can read by clicking here.

Over the past few months I’ve been doing a fair bit of work on Resonance FM, both with my own radio show (entitled Smoke & Mirrors) and as a guest on other shows.

Most recently, Upstart Theatre – the company behind ‘Oh Well Never Mind Bye’  – and I put together a radio show all about the play we’re currently doing which runs until 4th July 2009 at The Union Theatre.

The result is the first episode of The Matthew Duggan Podcast, an occasional podcast hosted by me. In this episode, I chat with writer Steven Lally, director Tom Mansfield and assistant director Laura Casey about the themes of the play, the creative process and the genesis of the play and the events of July 2005.

Here you can listen to the first episode and all the episodes will also be featured on iTunes. Just type in ‘Matthew Duggan’ into the iTunes Store and look under podcasts.

Enjoy the show and why not leave a comment below or on iTunes if you enjoy it?

To that end, our lovely press ladies got us into a number of publications including the London Lite, a free newspaper which runs listings for upcoming shows.

Write a review of Oh Well Never Mind Bye

I’ll update the blog shortly about Press Night and the joys of sitting opposite Michael Billington from The Guardian while he reviewed the show we’re were performing.

If you phone the Union Theatre Box Office on 0207 261 9876 and quote ‘Friends Offer’, you can get two tickets for the price of one.

The show starts at 7:30pm and the theatre is at 204 Union Street, London, SE1 0LX.

See you there!

For all the info – in a lovely spangly poster – click here.

Press Night is on 18th June and there’s a gala night on 20th June.

Hope to see you there.

You can tune in to Resonance on Thursday either online at ResonanceFM.com or on 104.4FM within the London area.

To find out more about the play itself, as well as details of the cast and crew, check out www.upstart-theatre.co.uk

It’s a project that we started work on around 4 years ago, shortly after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell underground station in London. Jean Charles was shot as a result of a series of intelligence blunders by The Metropolitan Police following the London bombings of 7th July and the failed bombings of 22nd July. As a result of this, the Upstart project was originally called The 22nd July Project. We began by doing workshops on the ideas that the shooting brought to light, but slowly Tom and Steven realised that the wider issues of how the situation was reported were as crucial (if not, more so) than the direct effects of the shooting itself.

As a result, the idea for Oh Well Never Mind Bye came about. Shortly afterwards, the script was written by Steven and has just finished the casting process, using two new actors to the project and two (myself and the excellent Susanna Fiore) who have been in it since the events the play is based on occured. We start rehearsing next week for two weeks, then it’s on to a three week run at The Union Theatre in Southwark, south London.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll post info from rehearsals and news about the play itself. So, watch this space…