Dates June 2006 Arts Educational, London (School of Acting) Performances 2 Audience 100 Sound Designer Simon Perkin	Company Arts Educational Cast Gary Hunt Luke Rutherford David Mendham Mark Martin Laura Haddock Jay Carrington Carla Chases Craig Hamblyn Adam Lake

In June 2006, inspired by the exceptionally high quality of the graduating year of actors from Arts Ed, Ben was invited to come and direct a staged reading of his second play, Nothing Personal.

Based on the structure of La Ronde, Nothing Personal sees nine characters in a series of inter-connected rendez-vous (A with B, B with C etc) until the last character appears with the first character again. Starting off seemingly about a bunch of sexual encounters, the play turns out to be largely about people not having sex, or misguidedly hoping that intimacy with someone else will help disguise the problems they have with themselves.

The skeleton staging of the play, with the actors all largely ‘off book’ – an almost unheard of achievement for a staged reading – met with a warm reception, and Ben is hoping to work on the play for a possible future incarnation. The standard of acting was unarguable and the piece hugely benefitted from having such a brilliant group of actors working on it on the threshold of, in several cases, already very successful careers.