Emilia picks up 3 Olivier Award nominations ahead of Pop-up Globe premiere

The West End production of EMILIA, the sensational feminist play that has taken London by storm, has just picked up 3 nominations in the 2020 Olivier Awards, given the nod for the ‘Noel Coward award for best entertainment or comedy play’, as well as ‘Best Sound Design’ and ‘Best Costume Design’. The show will make it’s international premiere in Auckland tonight, the final NZ Pop-up Globe production.

Commissioned by the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London where it was was first produced and performed in August 2018, Emilia earned instant popular and critical acclaim, leading to a transfer to London’s West End where it was a hit. The 2020 Pop-up Globe season marks the international premiere of this rousing modern play that champions the voice of an unsung feminist hero in the time of Shakespeare. Following Emilia Bassano, a poet, writer, and teacher who was relegated to the footnotes of history as a potential muse for Shakespeare, this sensational script that celebrates the collective strength of women throughout time.

The NZ production of Emilia is directed by award-winning director and actor Miriama McDowell and features a diverse cast of Kiwi women. The UK based playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm is currently in New Zealand for the international premiere of her work, and is available for interview alongside the local production’s cast and crew.

The new production will sign off Pop-up Globe’s farewell season from March 4-22, 2020, before the Anthony Harper Pop-up Globe playhouse pops down, setting their sights on international touring seasons.

EMILIA closes the Anthony Harper Pop-up Globe farewell season,
playing March 4- 22, 2020. Book at www.popupglobe.co.nz

About Emilia
Our Time is Now. 400 years ago, in Shakespeare’s London, Emilia Bassano wanted her voice to be heard. It wasn’t. Could she have been the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets? What of her own poems? Why was her story erased from history? Emilia and her sisters reach out to us across the centuries with passion, fury, laughter, and song. Listen to them. Let them inspire and unite us.

About Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Emilia is the third stage work from British playwright and author Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. Catapulted into the spotlight with the incredible success of Emilia, Malcolm is a versatile talent who currently has projects happening across television, film, and stage.

Taking only a year to write the acclaimed feminist work, Emilia has already been optioned as a film and Malcolm is currently developing the script for the screen with producer Manon Ardisson (God’s Own Country). Aside from Emilia, Malcolm has had her previous work produced at the Hampstead Theatre and Trafalgar Studios and been commissioned by the Old Vic, Clean Break, and Firehouse Productions. She is developing a book adapting her play The Wasp into a screenplay for Paradise City Films.

Her three works for the stage, Emilia, The Wasp, and Belongings, all centre women and their voices, a deliberate choice made by Malcolm to use her own privilege and power to help level the playing field – prioritising “writing good, complex, interesting roles for womxn to get their teeth into.”