“Don’t panic, it’s not real. Don’t move, it’s can’t hurt you. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, it’s your dream, you can go anywhere.”
Vee suffers from sleep paralysis. No big deal right? Loads of people do. Except, nothing is quite as it seems – and with the barriers between worlds becoming more and more porous in these troubled times, things start creeping through that shouldn’t be here. Hungry things. Join Vee as she has a chat with her very own demon in Matilda Ibini’s comic yet terrifying Don’t Panic. Don’t Move. Don’t Stay.
Written by Matilda Ibini
Read by Paapa Essiedu
Directed by Jennifer Bakst
Sound, Music and Editing by Max Pappenheim
CONTENT WARNING – This audio drama contains disturbing scenes and explicit descriptions of disordered sleep and sleep paralysis.
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Matilda Ibini is a bionic playwright and screenwriter. Credits include: Unprecedented Series, Headlong/Century Films/BBC4. Little Miss Burden, Bunker Theatre. Choice and Control, Old Vic Theatre. Muscovado, UK tour.
Paapa Essiedu’s theatre credits include Pass Over (Kiln Theatre), The Convert (Young Vic), Pinter One (Harold Pinter Theatre), Hamlet, King Lear (RSC, Kennedy Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York – Ian Charleson and UK Theatre Award winner for Best Actor), Racing Demon (Theatre Royal Bath), The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Mouse and his Child (RSC), You For Me For You (Royal Court Theatre), Romeo and Juliet (Tobacco Factory), King Lear (National Theatre), Black Jesus (Finborough Theatre), Outside on the Street (Pleasance Theatre), and Dutchman (Orange Tree Theatre). For television, his work includes I May Destroy You, Gangs of London, Press, The Miniaturist, Black Earth Rising, Revolting, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kiri, Not Safe for Work and Utopia; and for film, Murder on the Orient Express and Women at the Well (Screen International Star of Tomorrow 2017).
Creative associate at English Touring Theatre, Jennifer Baskt is a director and dramaturg, she was previously new work associate at Kiln Theatre. Her theatre credits as a director include Armstrong’s War (Finborough Theatre) and The Place of Shining Light(Theatre503). Her credits as an assistant director include Handbagged (Tricycle Theatre/59E59) and A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes(Tricycle Theatre).
Max Pappenheim‘s theatre includes The Night of the Iguana (West End); The Way of the World (Donmar); The Children (Royal Court/Broadway); Waiting for Godot (Sheffield Crucible); Macbeth (Chichester Festival Theatre); Dry Powder, Sex with Strangers, Labyrinth (Hampstead); Ophelias Zimmer (Schaubühne, Berlin/Royal Court); Crooked Dances (Royal Shakespeare Company); One Night in Miami (Nottingham Playhouse); Hogarth’s Progress (Rose Theatre Kingston); The Ridiculous Darkness (Gate Theatre); The Gaul (Hull Truck); A Kettle of Fish (Yard Theatre); CommonWealth (Almeida); Creve Coeur (Print Room); Switzerland, Spamalot, The Glass Menagerie (English Theatre of Frankfurt); Mrs Lowry and Son (Trafalgar Studios); My Cousin Rachel, The Habit of Art, Monogamy, Teddy, Toast, Fabric, Invincible (National Tours). Opera includes Miranda (Opéra Comique, Paris); Scraww (Trebah Gardens); Vixen (Vaults/International Tour); Carmen: Remastered(ROH/Barbican). Radio includes Home Front (BBC Radio 4). Associate Artist of The Faction and Silent Opera.