Red Ladder Theatre Company

Jo Mousley as Mrs Mason
We are all special.
Jo has found ‘The world of Ugly’ a difficult imaginary journey to go on. The facts and figures are easily accessible, but to use them in the creation of a possible future environment forces you to accept the inevitable. Jo believes in James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, a brave and independent scientist with a genuine love and understanding for the world in which he lives.
Ugly has so many huge questions within it, to start asking them is what makes this play important.  
This is Jo’s third production with Red Ladder, previously playing Lilly in ‘Forgotten Things’ and Elsie in ‘Riot Rebellion and Bloody Insurrection’. Recent theatre includes; The Road to Nab End (Oldham Coliseum) Blood Wedding (Liverpool Playhouse) Saturday Night, Sunday Morning (Oldham Coliseum and Harrogate Theatre) Jo in A Taste of Honey (Lyric Theatre, Lowry Centre).  TV; Nice Guy Eddie (BBC) Coronation Street (ITV) and Emmerdale (YTV)

Peter Hinton as Ben
Peter gained a BA in Acting from The Central School of Speech and Drama in 2006. Since drama school, his acting credits have included a walk-on-have-sex-walk-off part in Hotel Babylon (Ep1, Season 2), King Lear and The Seagull (Stratford-upon-Avon, World Tour, West End & a film - all for the RSC), The Revenger's Tragedy (National Theatre) and Cyrano de Bergerac (Chichester Festival Theatre). In between acting jobs he has also tried his hand at producing and directing. In March 2010 he completed an hour long TV show called The Academy, a mockumentary set in the Clapham Academy of Creative Art (CACA); a fictional, struggling drama school. The film is yet to be broadcast. When not acting Peter has had first hand experience of chasing the western capitalist dream, even sinking so low as to pay the rent by working in IT.

Personally, I believe that the choices we all face and make through life can usually be decided upon then and there as we are making them; we know in our guts whether our actions feel likely to leave a positive or negative effect on the recipient or receiver - or if morally - on the "bigger picture" be that the universe or God. Either way, as we make all those little decisions throughout each day; whether to recycle, whether to walk instead of get the bus, whether to catch the train instead of fly, whether to buy fair-trade or to save money and not, even the choice between buying a Big Mac or a Whopper - we forget that bigger picture. We have become so indoctrinated, so conditioned by the systems of capitalism within which we are enslaved, we live our lives in ignorance, forgetting to stop and ask why things are as they are and are remaining so.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why, you are forced to live in a society where as of April 2010, despite 7.8% of the UK population (that's 2.47 million people) being unemployed, investment bankers' bonuses alone totalled £8.5bn in the same quarter? That figure of course not including the average going basic salary of a good investment banker on £100,000 a year...

If something doesn't crack and we as a materialistic society continue to consume relentlessly - regardless of the warnings and implications - I believe the world created within Ugly is more than just a plausible future. It is impossible to accept Ugly's given circumstances without inevitably having to ask those difficult questions, which we as individuals seem to be constantly ignoring: where does this fixation we all seem to have with The Extra Super Special people come from...? Ugly is Pete's first credit working for Red Ladder.

Anna-Marie Nabirye as Mert
Anna-Maria graduated from Mountview in 2006. Previous to this she trained at The Brit School for two years on the Acting Course. This introduction to the performing arts has provided Anna-Maria with a strong diversity of skills in movement, physical theatre, ensemble and contemporary theatre methods of working. 

She has performed with a variety of companies including Hall For Cornwall, Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, Halfmoon YPT, The Little Angel Theatre, Quicksilver, Matthew Townshend Productions & Brighton Theatre. 

Anna-Maria is a versatile performer who also performs as a puppeteer, dancer and in bilingual British Sign Language productions.  With a love of new writing Anna-Maria has worked on a variety of devised, improvised and new writing projects and is one half of sketch and musical comedy act; Strong & Wrong. A keen human rights activist Anna-Maria has worked on pieces that tackle the issues of violence against women, genocide in The Great Lakes Region and most recently with The Brighton Theatre’s I Am A Warehouse which looks at the Gaza conflict.  Anna-Maria is very excited to have the opportunity to work with Red Ladder on Emma Adams' Ugly.

Rebecca Rogers as Woody
Rebecca graduated from Bretton Hall in 2007, before joining Altitude North Theatre Company, and touring amphitheatres in Cyprus with Sophocles’ Ajax. Since then she has worked with the Saltmine Theatre Company as an actor and director, performing in the UK and Lebanon. Rebecca has worked extensively with TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) in conjunction with The British Grotowski Project, and workshopped with physical theatre companies such as Theatre ad Infinitum and N.I.E. She also enjoys Clowning, and has worked with John Wright, which has enabled her to create and devise clowning and ensemble based pieces with Saltmine Theatre Company.

Rebecca believes Emma Adams cleverly sculpted satire is undeniably provoking. It asks questions of us that we are too scared to contemplate because we are overwhelmed by the responsibility we fear may come with the answers. UGLY is not just a dark vision of the future, it also acts as a stark warning to all of us about the unsustainable consumerism of western society. The play turns international politics on its head, forcing us to stare into the face of inconvenient, non-conformist, often deemed ugly answers to our problems. Dare we believe that true strength lies in vulnerability? As Alex Vondette once put it, “Forget about making poverty history - climate change will make poverty permanent.”