With their production of Orpheus Descending about to transfer to the Menier, Wave Me Goodbye running at the company’s home base, and the Olivier Award-winning Home I’m Darling completing its tour back home in Wales where it began, Theatr Clwyd today announces their new season for Autumn 2019.
Artistic Director Tamara Harvey directs Emily White’s début dark comedy Pavilion, set in a run-down spa town in a forgotten corner of Wales. This 21st century Under Milk Wood opens in the Anthony Hopkins Theatre at Theatr Clwyd on 2 October, with previews from 26 September, and runs until 12 October before transferring to The Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre in Newport – the first time a Theatr Clwyd production will have played at this exciting contemporary arts centre in south Wales.
Pavilion joins the previously announced Mold Riots by Welsh playwright Bethan Marlow – a bilingual production following the story of the riots in the summer of 1869, when Flintshire’s miners, protesting a ban on speaking Welsh when underground and continually decreasing wages, were brutally suppressed by English soldiers. Newly appointed co-Artistic Director of Paines Plough Katie Posner directs the large-scale site-specific production with a combined professional and community cast of over 100, leading audiences on an immersive theatrical experience through the streets of the market town of Mold.
For Christmas the company will present three productions. A new, immersive production of A Christmas Carol by award-winning Welsh playwright Alan Harris will be directed by the newly appointed Artistic Director of Keswick’s Theatre By The Lake, Liz Stevenson. Continuing Theatr Clwyd’s partnership with Bangor’s Pontio Arts and Innovation Centre will be a new Welsh language storytelling adventure for young children by acclaimed writer and director Emyr John. Y Trol Wnaeth Ddwyn y ‘Dolig is the story of a brave little girl and her pet chicken who save Christmas from a bullying troll at loose in the mountains.
Completing the season is the theatre’s annual rock and roll pantomime with this year’s Jack and the Beanstalk reuniting writer Christian Patterson (winner of Best Script at the inaugural Great British Pantomime Awards), director Zoë Waterman and Clwyd’s much-loved pantomime dame Phylip Harries.
Artistic Director Tamara Harvey and Executive Director Liam Evans-Ford said today, “It’s a rare privilege to collaborate with a playwright at the start of their career – and we’re thrilled to open our Autumn season with Emily White’s début Pavilion, a fiercely funny, sharply poignant new play. We then take to the streets with Mold Riots – a story ingrained within the history of our region. Fittingly it will be performed alongside local residents, who 150 years on from that fateful summer, help us remember those who fought for their identity and language. We’re delighted that these, alongside our three Christmas shows, mean that our Autumn season is built entirely around Welsh playwrights, exploring stories local and national, mythical, classical and new.”
Highlights of the visiting programme include Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Mystery, A Murder Is Announced (14 – 19 October), Yes, Prime Minister! (4 – 9 November), a new production of Olivier Award-winner Laura Wade’s Posh (23 – 26 October), and the welcome returns of Ballet Cymru with Romeo a Juliet (21 – 22 Oct) and National Dance Company Wales with Roots (7 – 8 November).
