The Almeida Theatre have announced casting for a brand new cycle of nine plays titled The Key Workers Cycle. 

The cast will feature professional actors and an eighty strong community cast with participants from local areas, including teachers, doctors, cleaners, support workers and delivery doctors with age rages between 16 to 96. 

The nine plays will be directed by Emma Baggott, Kate Golledge, Rikki Henry, Emily Ling Williams, Kate Lovell, Anna Marsland, Rachael Nanyonjo, Jack Nurse, Eva Sampson and Jenny Sealey. 

The plays will focus on key workers and how they kept our daily lives running. The production is made up of the nine short plays but split down into three parts, which run from 9-12 March.

The plays are written by Francesca Beard, Sonali Bhattacharyya, Josh Elliott, Annie Jenkins, Eno Mfon, Nessah Muthy, Danusia Samal, Yomi Ṣode, and Molly Taylor, with creative direction by Stephanie Bain and Dani Parr. 

Part one will feature plays titled Assembly: The Teachers Play, The Full Works: The Funeral Directors Play and Face the Music: The Social Workers Play. 

The shows take an honest look at what it was like to be a key worker during the pandemic with a support worker haunted by visions of the women who depend on her, a funeral director who also shows he is a dab hand with a pair of scissors and a teacher who wonders whether it is all still worth it. 

Part two is made up of Waste: The Refuse Collectors Play, Smiles Behind the Masks: The Midwives Play, and The Essence of the Job is Speed: The Delivery Drivers Play; with part three containing More Than We Can Bear: The Women’s Centre Workers Play, Nest Please: The Supermarket Workers Play and Stand Clear: The TFL Workers’ Play. 

Tickets are available now here.