Wise Children - Couverture souple

Emma is the Artistic Director of her new company, Wise Children. As Artistic Director of Shakespeare s Globe (2016/18), she directed Romantics Anonymous, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Little Matchgirl (and Other Happier Tales).

For the previous 20 years, she worked for Kneehigh as an actor, director and Artistic Director. Her productions for Kneehigh include: The Flying Lovers Of Vitebsk, Tristan & Yseult, 946: The amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, The Wild Bride, The Red Shoes, The Wooden Frock, The Bacchae, Cymbeline (in association with RSC), A Matter of Life and Death (in association with National Theatre), Rapunzel (in association with Battersea Arts Centre), Brief Encounter (in association with David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers Productions), Don John (in association with the RSC and Bristol Old Vic), Wah! Wah! Girls (in association with Sadler's Wells and Theatre Royal Stratford East for World Stages) and Steptoe & Son.

'Let's have all the skeletons out of the closet, today, of all days!'

It's 23 April, Shakespeare's birthday.

In Brixton, Nora and Dora Chance twin chorus girls born and bred south of the river are celebrating their 75th birthday. Over the river in Chelsea, their father and greatest actor of his generation Melchior Hazard turns 100 on the same day. As does his twin brother Peregrine. If, in fact, he's still alive. And if, in truth, Melchior is their real father after all...

A big, bawdy tangle of theatrical joy and heartbreak, Wise Children is a celebration of show business, family, forgiveness and hope. Expect show girls and Shakespeare, sex and scandal, music, mischief and mistaken identity - and butterflies by the thousand.

Emma Rice (Romantics Anonymous, Tristan & Yseult, The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk and Brief Encounter) brings her unique, exuberantly impish vision to Angela Carter's great last novel, Wise Children, launching her new theatre company of the same name and its London residency at The Old Vic.