New Perspectives has announced its Autumn/Spring season, featuring three productions designed to reach audiences across theatres, community venues, schools and digital platforms.
The programme includes the new play Let the Whale Die, a return tour for sixTeen, and a remastered binaural audio version of Black Shuck.
Written by Meg Schadler and directed by Artistic Director Angharad Jones, Let the Whale Die explores public outrage and personal reinvention through the story of a woman blamed for the death of an aquarium’s star orca.
The production follows New Perspectives’ acclaimed collaboration with Royal & Derngate on (the) Woman and will tour from April to June 2027, visiting Northampton, London, Bristol, Birmingham, Salford, Nottingham and Coventry, with an additional venue still to be announced.
Jesse Jones, Artistic Director of Royal & Derngate Northampton, said, “We’re delighted to be co-producing with New Perspectives again, following the success of (the) Woman last year. Our continued partnership reflects our commitment to collaborating with independent companies to develop midscale work and launch new stories that speak powerfully to today, before sharing them with national audiences.”
The season also includes sixTeen, co-written by Dr Lisa McKenzie and Jayne Williams. The production tells the story of three young women growing up during the miners’ strike and will tour to schools, community venues and non-traditional performance spaces from March 2027.
Completing the programme is Black Shuck by Michael Lambourne, which has been reimagined as a binaural audio experience. Drawing on East Anglian folklore and Lambourne’s personal experience of a cancer diagnosis, the digital production is scheduled for release in December 2026.
The cast includes Michael Lambourne, Jim Findley, Karl Theobald, Lucy Speed, Mark Jardine and Tanya Myers.
Angharad Jones said, “We are enormously proud of this season. Its breadth reflects what New Perspectives has always stood for: taking work to people, wherever they are. sixTeen will play in civic spaces across deindustrialised towns and villages; Let the Whale Die continues our partnership with Royal & Derngate, championing new writing that centres women’s perspectives on contemporary life; and Black Shuck is a deeply personal survival story, rooted in an old fenland legend, that questions our relationship with mortality. Folklore began as stories people told to make sense of the world around them, and in their different ways, all three of these distinct pieces do the same”.
The new season continues New Perspectives’ long-standing commitment to producing contemporary work for audiences across the UK, from major regional venues to rural and underserved communities.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
