Battersea Arts Centre has announced the full cast for the world premiere of NINA, a debut play by award-winning director Caroline Williams that draws on Chekhov’s The Seagull to examine coercion, power and the pursuit of creative expression. The production runs from 6 to 24 October 2026, with press night on 8 October, and opens BAC’s autumn season of experimental new work.

Williams, whose previous directing credits include You Do Not Have to Say Anything at The Yard and Now is the Time to Say Nothing at the Young Vic, co-directs the piece alongside live artist and playwright Deborah Pearson, whose work has toured to more than twenty countries across five continents. The production marks Williams’s first full-length play as a writer, and is described as a meta-theatrical fever dream rooted in personal experience.

The Cast

Six actors take on the production’s central roles. Maya Bartley O’Dea, whose theatre credits include Expendable at the Royal Court and Punk Rock at Stratford East, plays NINA 01. Samantha Begeman, recently seen in Brief Play About Rage at Omnibus Theatre, takes the role of NINA 02. Nina Bowers, who has performed at the Soho Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, plays NINA 03, while Gemma Barnett — winner of the 2020 Off-West End Award for Best Actor for her solo performance in A Hundred Words for Snow — takes NINA 04. Joseph Payne, known for his roles in BBC’s Showtrial and Netflix’s The Witcher, plays MAN 01, with Rowan Polonski, previously seen at the Old Vic and Hampstead Theatre, as MAN 02.

The premise follows a series of actresses auditioning to play Nina in The Seagull for a charismatic but sinister director whose methods are described as unorthodox and annihilating. The play uses imaginative stagecraft to interrogate the tension between female strength and survival, subverting familiar gender dynamics in ways intended to be simultaneously humorous, playful and unsettling.

Personal and Political

Williams drew on Meryl Streep’s observation about gender and language as a starting point for the work. “This play, through the prism of The Seagull, is an attempt to stage my version of that dream,” she 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.”

Pearson, who first encountered the script during the pandemic, described it as among the most exciting new writing she had read in years. “The text has such a clear form that is playful and theatrical, exploring questions around control and authority that remain depressingly relevant,” she said. “Caroline has written something moving and troubling and true.” She added: “At times human beings crave authority figures and that craving can lead us to some very dark places and to some very dark people. Caroline has explored that desire to be in charge or to let someone else take charge with startling and unsettling precision.”

BAC Creative Director Pelin Başaran contextualised the work within a broader cultural moment. “NINA, for me, speaks to something we experience far beyond theatre: how easily we can find ourselves living in the shadow of ‘genius’, trying to keep doing our work while holding on to our dignity,” she 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. NINA sets the tone for the season ahead: work that takes risks, experiments with form and isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions.”

Production and Practical Details

The production team includes producer Kate Yedigaroff, dramaturg Christopher Brett Bailey, video design by Daniel Denton, lighting design by Marty Langthorne, composition and sound design by AJ Turner, movement by Laura Dannequin, and set and costume design by Tomás Palmer. Casting is by Nadine Rennie CDG.

Battersea Arts Centre, based in a Grade II listed former town hall in Lavender Hill, south-west London, has a long history of nurturing unconventional and experimental theatre. Its Pay What You Can ticketing model — with a recommended price of £16 for NINA — reflects the venue’s commitment to accessible audiences. The production is age-guided at 16 and above, with evening performances at 7.30pm and Saturday matinees at 2.30pm. Tickets and further information are available on the BAC website.