David Edgar News

The Royal Shakespeare Company has today announced details of its Winter 2020 programme which includes a newly commissioned series of Tales for Winter running from Saturday 5 December 2020 to Saturday 23 January 2021.

Today, Birmingham Repertory Theatre has announced 12 new commissions titled The Park Bench Plays a?" a series of micro-plays that illuminate, interrogate and even celebrate today's socially distanced world.

PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project), in association with Middlebury College, proudly presents its 34th repertory season, Virtual(ly) PTP/NYC, featuring four streaming plays online running September 24 - October 18, 2020.

Adapted from the award-winning The Shape of the Pain (Scotsman Fringe First), this new short film created in isolation is a powerful and intimate insight into living with a rare, synesthetic chronic pain condition.

Now the theatre is able to announce that an archive recording of this sell-out production is available on Digital Theatre until December 31, by special arrangement with the Beckett Foundation.

The Royal Shakespeare company has today confirmed full performance dates for its previously scheduled productions of The Magician's Elephant and The Wars of The Roses Part 1 and 2 which will now take place in Winter 2021.

Responding to the needs of healthcare workers and aspiring young producers in the Midlands, independent production studio China Plate and Warwick Arts Centre are working together on digital projects designed to serve their communities. Both projects are supported by Coventry City of Culture 2021.

Nick Hern Books have announced they are now accepting applications for amateur online productions, with dozens of plays by leading contemporary writers available for amateur companies, schools, colleges, youth theatres and others to perform online via platforms such as Zoom, YouTube and Vimeo.

Leading playwrights April De Angelis, Jack Thorne, Laura Wade, David Eldridge, Lucy Kirkwood, Roy Williams, James Graham, Bryony Lavery and David Edgar have backed guidelines launched by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) today.

PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project) has announced the cancellation of their 2020 Off-Broadway summer season at The Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street) in New York City. Their 34th season was scheduled to run July 7 - August 2, 2020.

The Show Must Go Online today announced the full cast for their upcoming livestreamed reading of William Shakespeare's Henry VI Part III.

David Calder and Nicholas Le Prevost will join Henry Goodman in The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht, in David Edgar's revised translation, directed by Jonathan Church, running at Chichester Festival Theatre from 24 April a?" 16 May with a press night on 29 April.

This Spring, Caroline Horton is set to tour the UK with her latest critically acclaimed solo show following a multi-award winning Edinburgh run in 2019.

Last night was the press night for La Cage aux Folles [The Play] at Park Theatre.

Chichester Festival Theatre's Festival 2020 has today been unveiled by Artistic Director Daniel Evans and Executive Director Kathy Bourne.

On announcing the RSC's Winter 2020 season Gregory Doran, RSC Artistic Director, said: a?oeWhen I became Artistic Director, I wanted to stage every Shakespeare play in the canon once. We are more than two thirds of the way through that journey, which will conclude at the end of 2021.

Building on the flurry of creativity taking the Midlands by storm, Bite Size Festival will once again present a jam-packed, day-long programme showcasing the best of Midlands theatre. Shows will include Lewis Doherty's Game of Thrones style one-man fantasy epic BOAR, and the West Midland's premiere of Caroline Horton's Stage Award-winning exploration of wanting to live and wanting to die, All of Me (the possibility of future splendour).

Nearly 500 arts organisations, human rights charities, schools, colleges and universities came together in June to present events and activities across the UK; whilst international partners and individuals also flew Ai Weiwei's flag to mark the 70th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Jermyn Street Theatre kicks off its 2020 season with three of Samuel Beckett's finest short plays. The Beckett Triple Bill will be directed by Trevor Nunn and feature the stellar cast of Niall Buggy, Lisa Dwan, James Hayes and David Threlfall. These works are as funny as they are poignant, as compelling as they are lyrical and, together, they demonstrate Beckett's remarkable range, inventiveness, and wit.

When the late Stephen Jeffreys' award-winning comedy Valued Friends opened at the Hampstead Theatre in 1989, one or two critics, suspicious of its brilliant structure and well-crafted narrative, declared it a?oesafea?? and a?oeold-fashioned' - by which they meant that the London fringe, or alternative, theatre had gone soft.