New Diorama celebrates fifth birthday with three world premieres
Season preview
NEW Diorama Theatre will celebrate its fifth birthday with a season of powerful, innovative, theatrically and thematically diverse productions by a range of exceptional emerging theatre companies from across the UK.
As well as a wide range of new productions, extended runs, London premieres and theatre festivals, New Diorama will also continue to develop partnerships with theatres across the UK, maintaining strong ties with venues such as The Lowry and Bristol’s Tobacco Factory Theatres, as well as regional producing outfits, such as Dep Arts.
Alongside these longstanding partnerships, New Diorama is also working with Hull Truck and Newbury’s Watermill Theatre for the first time, helping to bring work by their exceptional emerging companies to London audiences.
The new season opens with the London premiere of Alex Oates’ brand new perspective on modern policing, Pig. Presented by Hull-based company Silent Uproar, it runs from September 15 to September 19, 2015.
Supported by Hull Truck and Hull City of Culture 2017, this dark comedy combines live music with performance to explore both sides of the thin blue line. Read more
Presenting the first in a groundbreaking series of world premieres, and fresh from directing Complicite’s international hit Lion Boy, James Yeatman returns with his own company Kandinsky, whose intensely physical new production Dog Show (September 29 to October 17) is inspired by the true story of Hong Kong’s infamous serial dog murderer. Read more
New Diorama Theatre is also hosting two of London’s most exciting theatre festivals. This autumn the groundbreaking RIFT are re-imagining their sell-out festival Shakespeare In Shoreditch (September 30 to October 10). This follows the 2014 run which saw hundreds of audience members a night take to the streets for performances in pubs, streets and houses around Hoxton.
In the New Year, NDT Associate Ensemble The Faction return with a twenty one-person ensemble to deliver an ambitious and electrifying reinvention of the play that was the subject of the company’s first full-length production seven years ago, Richard III (January 5 to February 6, 2016). It will be performed alongside a revival of their hugely popular series of powerful, stylish solo mini-adaptations of popular classics: Reptember Reloaded (Sunday and Mondays from January 10 to February 1).
Following this, Watermill Theatre Associate Company, Rhum and Clay, transfer their comedy noir, Hardboiled: The Fall of Sam Shadow, a co-production between Rhum and Clay Theatre Company and The Watermill Theatre in collaboration with director Beth Flintoff, to New Diorama (February 9 to February 27).
Then, in an extraordinary world premiere, NDT Associate Ensemble Spare Tyre will present a brand new installation, The Garden (March 2 to March 5). Designed especially for people with dementia and their carers, but open to anyone interested in how the arts can improve the lives of those with dementia, this revolutionary new project will be performed at a public venue for the very first time.
After their sell-out premiere run in 2014, Engineer Theatre Collective return to NDT to present Run, their potent exploration of young people working in finance inspired by the story of the Meryl Lynch intern who died after reportedly working 72 hours straight (March 15 to April 9).
Also returning are in-house company PIT with the London premiere of the radical stage adaptation of Orwell’s Down and Out In Paris and London (April 19 to May 14), in co-production with Greenwich and Pleasance Theatres. Written and directed by New Diorama’s Artistic and Executive Director David Byrne, this adaptation, the first in 35 years, combines Orwell’s autobiographical tale with Polly Toynbee’s 2003 book Hard Work, which saw her experience the lives of London’s working poor first hand.
In May, internationally renowned and critically acclaimed NDT Associate Ensemble, Idle Motion, return to New Diorama with their brand new show, The State We’re In (May 24 to June 11). Inspired by true events, the company explores the story of Frestonia and the Notting Hill squatters who declared themselves independent from Great Britain, against the backdrop of political strife in 1977.
After a barnstorming year in 2015, New Diorama and A Younger Theatre’s Incoming Festival will return in summer 2016 (June 24 to July 3), with ten days of the best emerging theatre companies coming from all over the UK to perform. Working with the Peter Brook Awards, the 2015 Peter Brook Festival Award shortlist will be announced shortly: a prize awarded to the company who present the best show at Incoming.
Finally, thanks to its continued work with STAGETEXT, Arts Council England and the Backstage Trust, New Diorama has announced that there will be captioned access performances throughout the entire new season. New Diorama are the only small, unfunded theatre in the UK offering regular access performances to open up shows for the benefit of those deaf, deafened, hard of hearing or for whom English is not a first language.
For more information or to book, call 020 7338 9034 or visit www.newdiorama.com/.