Wiltshire Creative will premiere Barney Norris’ explosive new adaptation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, retold in present-day Wiltshire, at Salisbury Playhouse in February as part of its 2019-20 Autumn Winter season.
Blood Wedding, a Wiltshire Creative, Up In Arms and Oxford Playhouse production, is a tragedy by Federico Garcia Lorca about the cycle of life, the progression of time, choice, deception, fate and nature. Alice Hamilton of Up In Arms will direct.
Norris’s previous plays include Echo’s End (Salisbury Playhouse), Nightfall (The Bridge Theatre) and The Remains of the Day (Out of Joint).
Barney Norris said: “I can’t express how fortunate I feel to be making work for Salisbury once more. This is the ninth story I’ve told in this theatre; the support Wiltshire Creative has given me over that period has shaped the stories I tell, the artist I am. Since I was a kid growing up in Salisbury, I’ve had a dream: to make a play for the main house that could then tour round the country, carrying the city’s stories far and wide for all to hear. With this play, I’m finally achieving my dream, and I’m thrilled to be championing the lives of the people of Wiltshire at a moment when the world is talking about us for reasons we’d rather hadn’t happened. This play is an attempt to insist on the epic dignity of our lives, wherever we live them: this feels like a good moment for this county to be telling that story.”
Also part of the forthcoming season are Wiltshire Creative productions of Alan Ayckbourn’s sparkling comedy Relatively Speaking and of Hugh Whitemore’s Alan Turing drama Breaking the Code – both of which will be performed in the round in a transformed auditorium.
Relatively Speaking runs from 5 to 28 September 2019 at Salisbury Playhouse, followed by Breaking the Code from 4 to 26 October.
Wiltshire Creative Artistic Director Gareth Machin said: “We’re delighted to be working again with Barney Norris, following Echo’s End which ran here in 2017. We’re also really looking forward to transforming the Main House again, to present two captivating plays in the round for our audiences.”
