Following a highly acclaimed tour of their stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses, Pilot Theatre will next year stage the world premiere of Emteaz Hussain’s new adaptation of Alex Wheatle’s Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize Winner Crongton Knights.
Directed by Corey Campbell (Artistic Director of Strictly Arts Theatre Company) and Pilot Theatre’s Artistic Director Esther Richardson (Noughts & Crosses and Brighton Rock), the new adaptation will premiere at the Belgrade Theatre Coventry from 8-22 February 2020 and will then embark on a national tour until May.
Life isn’t easy on the Crongton Estate but when the magnificent six set out to help a friend in trouble, much larger problems come their way.
Although, with the help of a few good friends nothing is impossible, and lessons learned the hard way are ones you’ll never forget. That’s when a crew becomes a family.
Crongton Knights will be the second of four co-productions between Pilot Theatre, Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry and York Theatre Royal who last year formed – with the Mercury Theatre Colchester – a new partnership to develop theatre for younger audiences. From 2019-2022 the consortium will commission and co-produce an original mid-scale production each year. Each production will play in all the consortium venues as well as touring nationally. The consortium’s first production, Noughts & Crosses, was seen by over 30,000 people on tour with 40 % of the audience being aged under 20.
Born in London to Jamaican parents, Alex Wheatle’s first book, Brixton Rock (1999), told the story of a 16-year old boy of mixed race, in 1980s Brixton. The novel was subsequently adapted for the stage and performed at the Young Vic in 2010. Its sequel, Brenton Brown, was published in 2011.
Alex said about the new stage adaptation of Crongton Knights: “I am very proud that Pilot Theatre are adapting my novel, Crongton Knights, for the stage. It’s a modern quest story where on their journey, the young diverse lead characters have to confront debt, poverty, blackmail, loss, fear, the trauma of a flight from a foreign land and the omnipresent threat of gangland violence.
The dialogue I created for this award-winning novel deserves a platform and I for one can’t wait to see the characters that have lived in my head for a number of years, leap out of my mind and onto a stage near you.”
On adapting Crongton Knights, Emteaz Hussain said: “On my first reading of Crongton Knights, I immediately recognised the intricate, multicultural, working class world that Alex Wheatle had vividly created. The unflinching brutality tempered by bighearted grace and the dignity afforded to the characters that I related to. I loved how these disparate young people struggled to bond in order to overcome such insurmountable obstacles in their young lives, and I jumped at the chance to adapt this for stage.”
Schools workshops and outreach projects, along with free digital learning resources, will be available alongside the national tour.
Crongton Knights will open at Belgrade Theatre Coventry from 8-22 February 2020 and will then tour to York Theatre Royal (25-29 February), The Lowry Salford (10-14 March) and Derby Theatre (17-21 March). Other tour dates will be announced later in the year.
