Creative Team
Cast
Gordon Geof Atwell
Lizzy Alice Brittain
Nick Fred Fergus
Joe Manish Gandhi
Tunde Dauda Ladejobi
Georgina Carla Langley
David Jonathan McGuinness
Helen Johanne Murdock
Abigail Tessie Orange-Turner
The Cleaner Terry O’Donovan / Rowena Le Poer Trench
Eileen Fiona Watson
Kitty Ines Butler-Cope / Tessa Campbell / Eliza Hudson Kuper
Creative Team
Creators Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan
Writer Chloë Moss
Director Daphna Attias
Costume and Props Jenny Hayton
Movement Director Ayse Tashkiran
Dramaturg Lucy Morrison
Casting Hammond Cox
Producer Katherine Woodward
Stage Manager Ellen Swailes
Assistant Stage Manager Louisa Glading
Participation Producer Lucy Dear
InSites Trainee Programme Cohort
Trainee Producer Denzel Ucheaguwa
Trainee Director Louis Wharton
Trainee Stage Manager Alenya Sharpe
Trainee Performer Rowena Le Poer Trench
Marketing Manager Vic Shead
PR Consultant Clióna Roberts
Graphic Designer Jennifer Gaughan of Studio 27eleven
Promotional Photography Ludovic des Cognets
Movement Attachment MFA Movement Directing and Teaching Ali Bianchi
Event information
Running time: approximately 1 hour 50 minutes (no interval)
Age guidance: 14+
Content warning: This performance contains some partial nudity and scenes of intimacy.
This event is part of Scene Change, a series of transformative performances and gatherings in unexpected places.
I Do is presented in partnership with the Barbican, South Street Reading and Lowry with lead sponsorship from Malmaison Hotels. The production is generously supported by Arts Council England and International Music & Art Foundation.
I Do was originally co-commissioned by the Almeida Festival and South Street Reading.
Production images by Greta Zabulyte.
Acknowledgements
Terry O’Donovan and Daphna Attias would like to say an enormous thank you to the incredible performers and creative teams that originated the production with us, and went on to tour it from 2012 to 2014: Kirsten Burrows, Duncan MacMillan, Faith Rowley, Felix Dunning, Nicola Hill, Danielle Morris, Phil Clarke, Richard Pattison, Andrew Bridgemont, Anna Carteret, Rachel Drazek, Christopher Dunham, Sarah Hunt, Zoe Hunter, Penelope McGhie, Nieve Morrisson, Christopher Reynolds, Anna Richmond, Ella Havas, Jessica, Katie, Denver Isaacs, Nieve Morrisson, William Oxborrow, Roisin Rae, Ella Havas, Simon Rice, Lisa Tremontin, Robert Cook, Chris Dunham, Clare Dunn, Tas Emiabata, Elan James, Jean Trend, Danny Easton, Emma MacLennon, Pia Nordin, Diane Parker, Clara Solana, Ayse Tashkiran, Lib Taylor, Angie Wallis.
Thank you also to the Barbican team for all their support in re-mounting this production for 2026.
A big thank you to all the staff at Malmaison Hotel Group – a special shout out to Audrey Lepine Taylor who went above and beyond.
From the Creator
A note from the Co-Artistic Directors, Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan
We started Dante or Die in our bedrooms. We dreamt up our first shows sitting on our beds, rehearsed in our tiny kitchens, held caffeine-fuelled production meetings on the living room floors of our various flatshares in between working in bars, restaurants and a myriad other temporary jobs. As newly graduated ‘theatre-makers’ we were hungrily figuring out how to actually produce a show and convince some audiences to take a chance on us. And now, Dante or Die is a fully grown adult – twenty years of making work, and a creative partnership between us which is as strong as ever.
As we approached turning twenty it’s been impossible not to reflect. When we first mentioned reviving a show to celebrate this anniversary we immediately said I Do. It felt like I Do was a gear shift for us. Our work previously had our hearts on our sleeves, it had a distinctive approach to choreography of space and audience, and an energy was driving the work that brought audiences on physical journeys.
When we made I Do in 2013 we knew that we wanted story and dialogue to match those elements. At that moment in time, Terry had just married in Belgium as same-sex marriage was legal there, and same-sex couples in the UK could only have civil partnerships. Daphna was pregnant with her second child and didn’t want to get married despite familial and societal pressure. So many of our friends were starting families and choosing whether or not to get married. All of this led us into a constant stream of conversations about weddings, relationships, the meaning of commitment – at the same time, interrogating the legalities that ‘protect’ a married couple.
We created the structure of the show during a glorious R&D week in a halls of residence at the University of Reading which stood in for a hotel corridor and its adjoining six rooms. We experimented with running the action of six rooms at the same time as each other, finding ways for characters from a wedding party to visit different rooms within the ten minutes – and then replaying that again. There was a virtuosity and joy to working out how characters appeared and disappeared into different rooms, so that an audience would need to see the entire production to piece together every strand of the story. This structure became implicit in the dramaturgy of the play, and we found a poetic language in the logistics. We also found a way for the show to be entirely self-managed by the cast understanding where in the ten-minute-loop they each were, through knocks on doors, phone calls and lines shouted in the corridors. South Street Reading’s Artistic Director John Luther convinced the Malmaison Reading to let us perform a work-in-progress version that had been devised by this incredible company of performers.
We had found the structure, form and some of the content but the story still lacked the bite we wanted. We were yearning for rich dialogue that could make you laugh out loud one minute and cry a second later. When the director of the Almeida Festival, Lucy Morrison, programmed the show she match-made us with the playwright, Chloë Moss. Sitting on the floor of the Almeida’s stalls, we presented Chloë with an Excel spreadsheet detailing which room each character had to be in at what time. Chloë was alarmed, asking us questions like ‘Can’t the mother of the bride be in the groom’s room in the third minute?’ and we’d have to go back to the complicated colour-coded spreadsheet which had very little room for deviation. It was in that moment that we realised that we loved creating logistical theatre – and with I Do the logistics were, and remain, an enormous part of the dramaturgy and source of joy for audiences. It’s difficult to describe the show in words. The live experience is visceral, detailed and incredibly intimate, with the theatricality of repeating action existing in tension with the up-close, hyper-naturalistic performance style. We’ve always loved the synchronicity between site, story, form and content.
Collaborating with Chloë was extremely formative for our practice. She brought the story to places we would never have imagined, and filled each character with such richness. Revisiting the script for 2026 has allowed us all to go deeper again. We’ve updated some elements, for example how we live with technology now – voice notes and dating apps didn’t exist the first time round. And we’ve sharpened the relationships between the characters through Chloë’s sensitive and deft writing.
Of course, the heart and soul of why we originally made the show holds strong. Why do people still get married? What does a life-long partnership really mean? How do the decisions we make in our twenties end up defining our old age? We’re all thirteen years older than when we first made the show – we’ve had children, we’ve had divorces, we’ve supported friends and family through illness and challenges that we couldn’t have understood thirteen years ago. And we still come together to celebrate our close ones pledging their love and life to each other, despite knowing that marriage is a construct.
We love making theatre and films that sit in the in-between space; that play with the conflicts between head and heart, that grapple with the mundane reality of life versus the human spirit that exists within it. We’re pinching our twenty-something selves that we are still making these projects. Thanks for being with us for this new chapter, and thanks to everyone who has been part of the long, winding journey up to this hotel corridor, on this wedding day, with these people...
© Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan, January 2026
Biographies
Gordon
Geof Atwell has worked in theatre, film and television. After training at East 15 Acting School he was fortunate to be chosen to attend a residential summer school to study under Jacques Lecoq; this led to an interest in other European theatre forms. He has worked at a number of repertory theatres in the North West region. His work for the stage includes the title role of Macbeth and Gloucester in King Lear with Kaboodle Productions. He worked for some years with Kaboodle and was proud to be a part of an inventive adaptation of Of Mice and Men set in a dystopian future, in which he played Lennie.
He has also worked with the company Moving Being, which created radical adaptations, incorporating actors, dancers, musicians using a range of cutting edge media.
Productions with the company include the role of Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi in Cardiff. Other theatre includes work with the companies 7:84 Theatre, Avon touring and M6 Theatre Company. He was particularly interested in companies with cooperative structures where the members of the company were active in the decision-making process. He is a founder member of the street theatre company Granny Turismo, which has been touring extensively for the past sixteen years.
Film and TV include: Brookside, Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and Emmerdale, and the film, Dancin’ Thru’ the Dark.
Abigail
Work in theatre includes: Games for Lovers at The Vaults; Games and All the Little Lights at the Arcola; Masterpieces at the Finborough; Sket at Park Theatre; No Border at Theatre503; Bassett at Soho Theatre; and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at Jackson’s Lane.
TV and film: EastEnders, Midsomer Murders, The Other One series 1 and 2, Casualty, You, Me and Him, and the short films The Writers Group, Scooterjack, Every Me, Every You and FEIRG.
Dramaturg
Lucy Morrison was the Associate Director to the Royal Court from 2014–23. Prior to the Royal Court, she was Head of Artistic Programme at Clean Break, Associate at the Almeida and Literary Manager for Paines Plough.
As a director, work at the Royal Court includes: Hope Has a Happy Meal by Tom Fowler, That is Not Who I Am (Rapture) by Lucy Kirkwood, Scenes with Girls by Miriam Battye, The Woods by Robert Alan Evans, Manwatching by anonymous, Plaques and Tangles by Nicola Wilson, Pests by Vivienne Franzmann and Product by Mark Ravenhill.
Other directing includes: Personal Values by Chloë Lawrence Taylor; Akedah by Michael John O’Neill; The Animal Kingdom by Ruby Thomas; Paradise Lost, co-directed with Ben Duke for Lost Dog at BAC and on national tour; Elephant by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti at Birmingham Rep; Billy the Girl by Katie Hims; and with Clean Break: This Wide Night by Chloë Moss at Soho and on national tour; Little on the Inside by Alice Birch at the Almeida Festival; and it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now by Lucy Kirkwood at the Arcola.
Assistant Stage Manager
Louisa Glading is a graduate of Mountview. She has worked as a Stage Manager across theatrical environments, from repertory to small-scale touring and site-specific work, and with companies such as the Royal Opera House, Lost Dog Dance and The Old Vic. She is also a sound engineer, having worked with the National Theatre and on several Cameron Mackintosh Productions.
Trainee Director
Louis Wharton is a director and theatre-maker with a passion for queer storytelling and interdisciplinary collaboration. His work blends devising, new writing and experimental forms to uncover hidden narratives, often drawing from archives to celebrate LGBTQ+ histories.
Committed to working in both traditional and unconventional spaces – from theatres to nightclubs – he seeks to create intimate, proactive work that centres queer voices and fosters community dialogue.
About Dante or Die
Dante or Die (DoD) is an award-winning, internationally recognised theatre company specialising in creating and touring unique site-specific performances. It was co-founded by Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan in 2006, with 2026 marking the company's 20th anniversary.
Their unique, up-close and intimate storytelling combined with applied theatre engagement activity ensures all their productions are created from a place of understanding, and truly reflect the experiences of those whose voices they aim to amplify.
Since 2006 they have toured to over 90 venues and worked with more than 5,500 participants. Their work has been seen/viewed by audiences the world over through collaborations with world-class national and international arts organisations such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival,
Almeida Theatre, Traverse Theatre, Lowry, Wales Millennium Centre, Theatre Royal Haymarket and Battersea Arts Centre. Their live productions have won multiple awards, including Best Book and Lyrics at the Black British Theatre Awards for Kiss Marry Kill. The performance ensemble of Skin Hunger were awarded the OFFIES 2022 IDEA Performance award.
During the pandemic, Dante or Die began experimenting with digital storytelling. Partnering with the Guardian to present User Not Found video podcast resulted in winning Scenesaver’s Digital Honour Award and being shortlisted for the prestigious Prix Europa Awards. Odds On, their first interactive short film, transports audiences into the addictive world of online gambling. The project has won Digital Content Award at Arts Council England’s Digital Culture Awards, Best Interactive Film (International Media Festival of Wales), Best Experimental Short Film (Gully International Festival), and was shortlisted for Best Digital Project in The Stage Awards.
Scene Change
A season of transformative performances and gatherings in unexpected places
For the Barbican
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