Evolution 2022: Kick

Headlining this year’s festival is the Bill Cashmore Award-winning play Kick, an enthralling new play exploring motherhood, abortion and loss, bringing together an all-female creative team with writer Martha Watson Allpress, director Yasmin Hafesji and designer Xinping Wang.  Kick will headline each evening of the festival in the Lyric Studio.

When two motherless sisters find out they are pregnant at the same time, their seemingly identical situations lead to vastly different outcomes. As they grapple with their own bodies, the familiar patterns of their relationship and their grief, neither can breathe without it feeling like a judgement on the other.

Kick has been developed with generous support from the Bill Cashmore Award.

Content Warning: Please note that Kick contains discussion of abortion and loss.

Post-show Q&A  – Thu 03 Mar

Thursday’s performance of Kick will be followed by a Q&A with writer Martha Watson Allpress and director Yasmin Hafesji. This will run for approx. 25 minutes and is open to all ticket holders for this performance

About the Bill Cashmore Award: 

The Bill Cashmore Award enables young and emerging artists to transform a fledgling idea from the page to the professional stage. Run in conjunction with the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, The Bill Cashmore Award is open to submissions by writers, directors and performers between the ages of 18 and 25, who live or work in West London. The Award provides a unique opportunity to learn theatre from the inside out; to experience what it is to produce a play to a professional standard; to develop skills in a supportive and encouraging environment; and to have a springboard and a calling card to get started in this most challenging of industries.

Award founder, Sasha Bates, set up the Award in 2018 after the tragic, sudden death of her husband, actor, playwright, director and entrepreneur Bill Cashmore. She wanted to keep Bill’s memory alive by honouring his love of theatre and offering something of his spirit of inclusion and opportunity to those who may otherwise struggle to get a foot on the theatrical ladder.

“The Bill Cashmore Award provides creative young artists with an opportunity to discover their voices and learn to express them through theatre. The Award aims to promote experimental new writing which reflects the diversity of today’s world, and to thereby create outstanding work while providing a platform to those who deserve to be heard but are all too often overlooked.”  – Sasha Bates

Click here to explore the full Evolution Festival 2022 programme of events.

Photography by Nahwand Jaff