Maya Bartley O'Dea, Samantha Begeman, Nina Bowers and Gemma Barnett will each play a version of the title role in NINA, the debut play by director Caroline Williams, opening at Battersea Arts Centre on 6 October 2026.
Four actors will share the title role in NINA, the debut play by director Caroline Williams, which Battersea Arts Centre has now cast ahead of its world premiere. Maya Bartley O'Dea, last seen in Expendable at the Royal Court, plays NINA 01; Samantha Begeman, who appeared in Brief Play About Rage at the Omnibus Theatre, plays NINA 02; Nina Bowers, co-writer and performer of English Kings Killing Foreigners at Soho Theatre, plays NINA 03; and Gemma Barnett, who won the 2020 Off-West End Award for her solo turn in A Hundred Words for Snow, plays NINA 04.
They are joined by Joseph Payne as MAN 01, The Writer, and Rowan Polonski as MAN 02, The Director. Payne played Malcolm in Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe and Ferdinand in the RSC's The Tempest, for which he took third prize in the Ian Charleson Awards. Polonski is on stage at the Old Vic until 19 September in How The Other Half Loves, opposite Roger Allam.
The play takes its starting point from The Seagull. A succession of actresses audition for the part of Nina before a charismatic and sinister director whose methods, as the production has it, are unorthodox, annihilating and extremely effective. Williams co-directs with Deborah Pearson, the live artist and playwright behind The Future Show and the Royal Court's Inside Bitch, with whom she was a resident artist at Somerset House Studios.
Caroline Williams said: "Excluding the more surreal elements, everything that happens in NINA has happened to me or someone I know. In that sense, it is a deeply personal work, in which I've tried to find a theatrical language for what being a woman really feels like. The setting is a theatre, and the subject is the dynamic between an actress and her director, but it could be set in any place where a woman is pushed beyond what she can safely hold."
Deborah Pearson said: "I first read a draft of Caroline's play during the pandemic and I thought it was one of the most exciting pieces of new writing that I had encountered in a long time. The text has such a clear form that is playful and theatrical, exploring questions around control and authority that remain depressingly relevant."
Pelin Başaran, Creative Director of Battersea Arts Centre, said: "What drew me to NINA is the way Caroline explores questions of power, coercion and creative freedom through a theatrical language that is bold, surreal and unsettling. I'm incredibly proud that BAC is producing this ambitious new work, bringing together the distinctive artistic voices of Caroline and Deborah alongside such an exciting cast."
The production opens the venue's autumn season. Kate Yedigaroff produces, with dramaturgy by Christopher Brett Bailey, set and costume design by Tomás Palmer, video design by Daniel Denton, lighting by Marty Langthorne, composition and sound by AJ Turner, movement by Laura Dannequin and casting by Nadine Rennie CDG. Linzy Na Nakorn is associate director and artist wellbeing lead, Jacob Krumpolc associate video designer, Alexander Comana sound associate and Victoria Maytom associate set and costume designer.
NINA runs at Battersea Arts Centre on Lavender Hill from 6-24 October 2026, with press night on 8 October. Performances are at 7.30pm, with Saturday matinees at 2.30pm. Tickets are Pay What You Can, with a recommended price of £16, and the show carries an age guidance of 16+.
