Newly appointed Co-Artistic Directors of the RSC, Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey today announce their inaugural season for the Company, encompassing a full year of programming and opening up all four theatres in the Company’s Stratford-upon-Avon home – the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Swan Theatre, the newly invigorated The Other Place, as well as the popular outdoor performance space, The Holloway Garden Theatre.
Comprising eight Shakespeare plays across the four stages, three world premières, a European première, a UK première, two major revivals, and two visiting productions, the season will welcome internationally renowned talent to the RSC, with five writers and ten directors – including Harvey – making their RSC debuts, Ukraine’s Uzhhorod Theatre with King Lear, and Northern Ballet with Romeo & Juliet.
With a desire to put accessibility at the heart of their tenure, Evans and Harvey will programme a summer season in The Holloway Garden Theatre with bite-sized Shakespeare for all ages, plus workshops and events. A major new ticket initiative is also launched today with 25,000 tickets at £25 or less across the season in Stratford-upon-Avon. This will run alongside the TikTok £10 tickets for 14 to 25 year olds and state school students.
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans said today, “We begin our chapter at the RSC by announcing a whole year’s worth of shows – seventeen in total, across four stages. With this, our first season, we want to throw open the doors in every sense, collaborating with artists from across the globe on all of our stages, and ensuring we can welcome as many people as possible with a brand-new ticket initiative of 25,000 tickets across the season at £25 or less.
“Our house playwright sits at the core of our season, with eight new productions across our theatres. The timeless, protean nature of Shakespeare’s writing offers an exciting canvas for artists – and we’re excited to be renewing collaborations with so many of them, as well as inviting myriad others to make their RSC debuts. We will also host Northern Ballet for the first time with their imagining of Romeo & Juliet and Ukraine’s Uzhhorod Theatre with King Lear, both bringing their own unique take on Shakespeare’s stories.
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“Shakespeare stands alongside a play by Christopher Marlowe, his contemporary, and a raft of new work by some of our most creative contemporary storytellers – Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Sanaz Toossi, Nancy Harris and David Edgar, bringing first-time partnerships with Wise Children, Headlong, Good Chance and Kiln Theatre.
“This season marks the beginning of a new era for the RSC. We hope you will join us.”
The Shakespeare plays will be led by artists including Emily Burns, Blanche McIntyre, RSC Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey, Brendan O’Hea, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Tim Carroll and Rupert Goold, with actors Luke Thompson, Samantha Spiro, Alfred Enoch, John Douglas Thompson, Will Keen, Juliet Rylance and Luke Thallon leading the companies of Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pericles, Othello and Hamlet respectively.
The new work includes a co-production of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia with Emma Rice’s Wise Children; the European première of Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play English produced in association with Kiln Theatre and directed by Diyan Zora; a new project from the award-winning team behind The Jungle, Kyoto, in a co-production with Good Chance directed by Justin Martin and Stephen Daldry; a new adaptation of The Red Shoes by Nancy Harris, directed by Kimberley Rampersad; and David Edgar’s The New Real directed by Holly Race Roughan, Artistic Director of Headlong.
Completing the season, Tinuke Craig directs Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy of manners, The School for Scandal; and Co-Artistic Director Daniel Evans makes his return to the RSC stage in the title role of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II directed by Daniel Raggett.
