Noel Coward and young directors lead Sam Hodges’ debut season at Nuffield Southampton’s Nuffield Theatre is to co-produce a collection of nine one-act plays by Noel Coward next year with English Touring Theatre as part of its 2014 season. The venue’s new creative and executive director Sam Hodges announced today that the show, called Tonight at 8.30, will be directed by Blanche McIntyre and will be performed by a repertory ensemble cast. Performed in trios, the production will run from April 24 to May 24, 2014 before touring. Hodges revealed that directors Natalie Abrahami, McIntyre and Michael Longhurst will join the theatre as associate artists. Longhurst will direct A Number by Caryl Churchill, with design by Tom Scutt, who also becomes an associate artist at the venue. The production will open the season and runs from February 6 to 22. Hodges also announced the theatre will be involved in two festivals, with one being held at the University of Southampton and one in the city centre. Nuffield in the Square will be a large-scale outdoor event in the city to celebrate it and the theatre’s 50th anniversary in summer 2014. A play about Southampton Football Club will be staged as part of the festival in Guildhall Square. Fulcrum Southampton, at the campus, will be a three-day series of events and performances exploring the interaction between science and art. It will run from March 21 to 23, 2014 and will feature work from artists such as writer Ella Hickson and video design company 59 Productions, which created the projections for War Horse. In a move to collaborate more closely with the university, Hodges announced Adam Brace as Nuffield’s first writer-in-residence and lecturer in script writing and performance at the university. Hodges said: “Part of the reason for a closer collaboration is that of our four stakeholders’ funding – Arts Council England, [Southampton] City Council, [Hampshire] County Council and the university – the only one going up is the university. So this is the time to be thinking of new models.” He added: “I want the Nuffield to be known for my generation of directors, designers and theatre-makers putting a spin on what we expect from regional theatre. Making work that is accessible but doing it in a fresh and bold way – taking classics and re-imagining them and doing new work but in a strategic rather than ideological way.”
Posted on: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 13:17:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015