Running Wild

For Lilly and her mother, going to Indonesia isn't just another holiday. It's an escape and a new start. But when Will takes a gentle ride along the beach on an elephant called Oona, calamity strikes. As a tsunami comes crashing towards them, Oona charges deep into the jungle, her young rider desperately clinging on. Miles from civilisation, there's wonder, discovery and treetop adventures among the orang-utans. But then as Lilly's thoughts turn to his mother left behind on the beach, tigers prowl, hunger hits, and she must learn to survive the rainforest. Samuel Adamson's adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel Running Wild was premiered by the Chichester Festival Youth Theatre in 2015. It received its professional premiere in May 2016, in a Regent's Park Theatre and Chichester Festival Theatre co-production. Running Wild was winner of Best Show for Children and Young People at the 2015 UK Theatre Awards.

Samuel Adamson's plays include: Wife (Kiln Theatre), Some Kind of Bliss (Trafalgar Studios), All About My Mother (from Almodóvar; Old Vic), Fish and Company (Soho Theatre/National Youth Theatre), Southwark Fair (National Theatre), Drink, Dance, Laugh and Lie (Bush Theatre/Channel 4), Grace Note (Peter Hall Company/Old Vic), Clocks and Whistles (Bush Theatre), contributions to the 24 Hour Plays (Old Vic), A Chain Play (Almeida Theatre) and Urban Scrawl (TheatreVoice/Theatre 503). Adaptations include: Ibsen's Pillars of the Community and Mrs Affleck, from Ibsen's Little Eyolf, (both at the National Theatre) A Doll's House (Southwark Playhouse); Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (Oxford Stage Company/Riverside Studios) and Three Sisters (OSC/Whitehall Theatre); Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi (Dumbfounded Theatre/Arcola Theatre/Radio 3); Bernhard Studlar's Vienna Dreaming (National Theatre Studio); a musical based on George MacDonald's The Light Princess, with Tori Amos (National Theatre); and Jack Maggs, from Peter Carey's novel (State Theatre Company of South Australia). Radio includes: Tomorrow Week (Radio 3). Film includes Running for River (Directional Studios/Krug). He was Pearson Writer in Residence at the Bush in 1997-8.