We’re thrilled to announce the full cast for Chiara Atik’s Poor Clare, directed by Blanche McIntyre.
Joining the previously announced Arsema Thomas, making her stage debut, and Freddy Carter, are Anushka Chakravarti, Hermione Gulliford, Liz Kettle, George Ormerod, and Jacoba Williams.
This hilarious and off-beat comedy views the story of Saint Clare and Saint Francis of Assisi through a modern, playful lens.
Poor Clare opens on 16 July, with previews from 12 July, and runs until 9 August.
Freddy Carter plays Francis. 
Theatre credits include: The Wars of the Roses (Rose Theatre Kingston); Agnes Colander (Theatre Royal Bath); Lines in the Sand (Soho Theatre); All Day Permanent Red (Royal Court Theatre) and Circa (The Vaults Theatre).
Television credits include: Shadow & Bone, Masters of the Air, Maigret, The Doll Factory, Free Rein, 15 Days and Pennyworth.
Film credits include: Wonder Woman, Heretiks and American Carnage.
Voice credits include: The Dagger and the Flame and Impact Winter.
Freddy trained at The Oxford School of Drama.
Anushka Chakravarti plays Beatrice. 
Theatre credits include: Coriolanus, The Crucible, Our Generation (National Theatre); The Divine Mrs S (Hampstead Theatre); The Censor, Love and Information (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama); How To Save a Rock (Pigfoot Theatre / NSDF 2019); Edward II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Skriker (Oxford University Drama Society); Garden (Poltergeist Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing and Girls Like That (Birmingham Rep).
Television credits include: Never Let Me Go and Jerk.
Anushka trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Hermione Gulliford plays Ortolana. 
Theatre credits include: To Have and To Hold (Hampstead Theatre); The Southbury Child (Bridge Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe); 3 Winters, Hotel (National Theatre); Love For Love, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anthony and Cleopatra (RSC); The Way of the World, The Critic, The Real Inspector Hound, Three Sisters (Chichester Festival Theatre); Arcadia (Bristol Old Vic); The Country Wife and Twelfth Night (Sheffield Crucible).
Television credits include: The Chelsea Detective, Culprits, The Nevers, Doc Martin, Count Arthur Strong, Foyle’s War, The Bletchley Circle, Call The Midwife and Upstairs Downstairs.
Film credits include: Cruella, Where Hands Touch, Stage Beauty and The Affair of the Necklace.
Hermione trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Liz Kettle plays Peppa. 
Theatre credits include: Macbeth (An Undoing) ( Rose Theatre, Kingston / Polonsky Shakespeare Theatre, New York / Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh); Dracula – Mina’s Reckoning (National Theatre of Scotland); Richard III (Rose Theatre, Kingston / Liverpool Playhouse); The Girl on the Sofa (Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh / Berlin Schaubühne / Thomas Ostermeier); Henry VI (RSC / World Tour); The Tempest (Tron Theatre, Glasgow); Waves, The Seagull, Attempts On Her Life ( National Theatre / European Tour / Broadway); Catch 22 (Northern Stage); TRUTH – Song Theatre (National Tour); Richard III, Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe); Aulis (Abbey Theatre, Dublin); The Roaring Girl’s Hamlet (Sphinx Theatre Co.); Plasticine (Royal Court); and The Tempest (Schauspielhaus Köln / Hamburg)
Television credits include: The Crown, Unforgotten IV, Paris with Alexei Sayle, The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton, Doctors, Jeeves & Wooster, Inspector Morse, Rosemary & Thyme and Poirot.
Film credits include: Fracture, Between Us and The Final Journey.
Radio credits include: Keli.
George Ormerod plays Beggar / The Poor. 
Theatre credits include: Henry V (The Attic Theatre); The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Attic Theatre); and Othello (Worcester Repertory Company).
George trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Arsema Thomas plays Clare. 
Poor Clare is Arsema’s stage debut.
Television credits include: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.
Film credits include: She Taught Love and Fall 2.
Arsema trained at LAMDA and is a graduate of Yale University and Carnegie Mellon University.
Jacoba Williams plays Alma. 
Theatre credits include: Pinocchio (Watermill Theatre); Macbeth, Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Globe Prison Project); The Frogs (Kiln Theatre / Royal & Derngate); Women & Theatre: Revival (Birmingham Rep); Twelfth Night For One Night Only, The Fir Tree, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Winter’s Tale, Our Verse in Time (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse); Where Do We Go From Here? (Pentabus Theatre); Alice in the Universe (Oxford Playhouse); Bogeyman (Pleasance Dome); Before I was a Bear (Bunker Theatre / Soho Theatre); Gulliver’s Travels (Unicorn Theatre); Love Dance (Chiswick Playhouse); The Snow Queen (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough); When the Sea Swallows Us Whole (Vaults Festival) and Queens of Sheba (Camden People’s Theatre / New Diorama / Underbelly / Vaults Festival – Winner of The Stage Award 2018).
Television credits include: Pushers, Vera and Twelfth Night.
Short film credits include: Framed, The Vest, Highlife, Montague, Cleo’s Choice and Expiry Date.
Radio credits include: Bleak House, Vergil and Precious Little Thing.
Jacoba trained at Italia Conti Academy of the Arts & the National Youth Theatre.
Chiara Atik is a playwright and screenwriter. Her play Poor Clare, was the recipient of the 2022 American Theatre Critics Association’s New Play Award, the LA Drama Critics Circle winner for Best New Play, and was a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist.
Other plays include Five Times in One Night, Bump, and the comedy Women, a modern re-telling of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which was a New York Times Critic’s Pick for Comedy and won the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Chiara is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. She splits her time between New York and Los Angeles.
Blanche McIntyre directs..
Theatre credits include: The Merry Wives of Windsor, All’s Well That Ends Well, Titus Andronicus, The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC); Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night: For One Night Only, Measure for Measure, Bartholomew Fair; The Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare’s Globe); The House of Shades, Hymn, The Writer (Almeida Theatre); Letters from Max, Apex Predator, The Invention of Love, Botticelli in the Fire (Hampstead Theatre); Tartuffe (National Theatre); Arabian Nights (Bristol Old Vic); The Norman Conquests (Chichester Festival Theatre); Noises Off (Nottingham Playhouse); Welcome Home, Captain Fox! (Donmar Warehouse); The Oresteia (HOME, Manchester); Super High Resolution (Soho Theatre); Arcadia (ETT); Women in Power; Tonight at 8:30; The Nutcracker (Nuffield Southampton Theatres); Ciphers (Out of Joint / Bush Theatre / Exeter Northcott); The Birthday Party (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Seagull (Headlong / Nuffield Southampton Theatres / Derby Theatre); The Seven Year Itch (Salisbury Playhouse); Accolade, Foxfinder, Molière or The League of Hypocrites (Finborough Theatre).
Opera includes: Tosca and The Marriage of Figaro (ETO).
