The Javaad Alipoor Company (Manchester, UK) 

Co-created by Javaad Alipoor and Kirsty Housley 

This performance begins right at 7:00 PM PDT each night — Dates: September 17, 18, and 19, 2021 — and is not available to watch on-demand at a later time. If you join late, you will not be able to start from the beginning. To ensure that you see the full program, please make sure to check your pass links and be on the streaming platform in advance of the start time. 

The gap between the rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger around the world.  Social media feeds and accelerates this ever-widening divide. In the global South we see the children of elites and post-colonial dictatorships, flashing cash, dollar signs, Bollinger champagne and infinity pool holidays while the wider population suffers under sanctions and dictatorships.

Rich Kids is a play about entitlement and consumption, and how digital technology is complicit in social apartheid and gentrification. It spotlights the human problem of what successful and brutal people do with their coddled and useless children. It is the sequel to the award-winning The Believers Are But Brothers, and is the second part of a trilogy of plays about how digital technology, resentment, and fracturing identity are changing the world.

Rich Kids previewed at Theatre in the Mill (Bradford) in July 2019 before opening at the Traverse as part of their Edinburgh Festival programme. The show then transferred to HOME Manchester for a two-week run in October 2019. A subsequent UK tour in early 2020 was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unable to perform the show live, and with continued support from Battersea Arts Centre, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, and Arts Council England, we created a new digital version of the project for online audiences, which was streamed live with a range of partners throughout the UK during the summer and autumn of 2020: Battersea Arts Centre, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Electric Dreams Festival, Traverse Theatre, AMATA at Falmouth University, Oxford Playhouse, Leicester University, and HOME Manchester.

ACCESSIBILITY

Captions will be available for this program.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Javaad Alipoor is a multi-award-winning playwright, director, filmmaker, and performer. The Believers Are But Brothers (2017) opened in Edinburgh, where it won a Fringe First Award, before transferring to London’s Bush Theatre and on to an international tour. Javaad adapted the play for the BBC in 2018.  The play’s sequel—Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran (2019)—premiered at the Traverse Theatre. Its London transfer and subsequent national tour was postponed by COVID-19. A new digital version went on to tour online, including at the Public Theater’s Under The Radar festival and was selected for the Sundance Film Festival. He is artistic director of The Javaad Alipoor Company, which is currently developing work with theatres and festivals around the world, including the UK’s National Theatre, the National Theatre of Parramatta, the Mannheim National Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, and HOME Manchester.

SPONSORSHIP

The original production was co-produced with HOME Manchester in association with Traverse Theatre Company co-commissioned by Diverse Actions, Theatre in the Mill, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Battersea Arts Centre, and Bush Theatre.

The digital production was supported by Battersea Arts Centre and Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

Both versions of the project are supported by Arts Council England.