Manchester International Festival Names New Artistic Director

Manchester International Festival today announces that its new CEO & Artistic Director is to be John McGrath, currently Artistic Director and Chief Executive of National Theatre Wales.

McGrath will start in September 2015 part-time, taking over from MIF's founding CEO & Artistic Director, Alex Poots, who is moving to New York as founding CEO & AD of a new arts space, The Culture Shed.

Over the past seven years McGrath has set up and led National Theatre Wales, 'one of the best things to happen to the stage in the past five years' (The Observer). The company has built an international reputation for its large scale site-specific and digital work and collaborations with companies such as Tokyo's New National Theatre and Berlin's Rimini Protokoll. Earlier in his career, McGrath led Manchester's Contact Theatre, re-inventing it as an industry leader in work with diverse young artists.

"The speed and success with which Manchester International Festival has established itself in the top tier of festivals worldwide has been astonishing. Like many others across the globe, I've been deeply impressed by the festival's unique and brilliantly realised artistic policy; and the unprecedented level of local commitment from government and business. And of course a big part of that success is the wonderful setting of Manchester - one of the world's truly great creative cities. I am thrilled by the opportunity to work with the team behind MIF's success, and alongside the rich and varied talents of Manchester's unique cultural sector," said John McGrath

"We are very pleased to welcome John McGrath back to Manchester to take up the reins at MIF after his remarkable success as founding Artistic Director and CEO of National Theatre Wales. We are so grateful to Alex Poots for his creative vision, his energy, commitment and sheer hard graft over the last ten years. I know that John will build on the wonderful work Alex and his team have done, and take MIF in to its next successful decade," commented Tom Bloxham MBE, Chair, MIF

John McGrath launched the non-building-based National Theatre Wales in November 2009, since when the company has staged productions all over Wales, the UK, internationally and online over four seasons. Highlights have included Michael Sheen's The Passion, staged in Port Talbot, the critically-acclaimed Coriolan/us performed in an aircraft hangar for the London 2012 Festival, and McGrath's own pioneering staging of The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning.

The company has garnered an international reputation for making large-scale site-specific work, for digital innovation (including its online community), for weaving tangible community engagement into its productions, collaborating with international companies including Berlin's Rimini Protokoll and Tokyo's New National Theatre and reinforcing Welsh artists including Owen Sheers and Ed Thomas' place on the global stage.

As well as his two senior roles at National Theatre Wales, John has directed many of the company's productions, including its first, A Good Night Out in the Valleys, Love Steals Us From Loneliness, In Water I'm Weightless, and The Opportunity of Efficiency (produced by the New National Theatre, Tokyo),

Most recently, he has directed the company's current production of Mother Courage and her Children, performed in a Labour Club in Merthyr Tydfil by an all-female cast. It is the first production in NTW's fifth season, which will a new version of the Iliad, directed by Mike Pearson & Mike Brooks and The Insatiable, Inflatable Candylion, a festive show made by Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys and staged at Christmas 2015.

Before his appointment at National Theatre Wales, John had been a theatre director in New York, London and Manchester. From 1999-2008 he was Artistic Director of Contact Theatre, Manchester. He trained and worked in New York for several years, including a stint as Associate Director of leading experimental company Mabou Mines. As a director, he has worked with a wide range of artists including poet Lemn Sissay (Storm, Something Dark and Why I Don't Hate White People) and hip-hop theatre artist Benji Reid (b like water). In 2004 he published a book about art in the surveillance age, Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space, and in 2005 was awarded the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Cultural Leadership Award.

Manchester International Festival is the world's first festival of original, new work and special events and takes place biennially, in Manchester, UK. The Festival launched in 2007 as an artist-led, commissioning festival presenting new works from across the spectrum of performing arts, visual arts and popular culture.

Some highlights of the first four festivals include premieres of Steve McQueen's commemoration of fallen British soldiers, Queen and Country; Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett and Chen Shi-Zheng's Chinese opera Monkey: Journey to the West; group art event Il Tempo del Postino featuring work by Matthew Barney, Tacita Dean and Olafur Eliasson; Zaha Hadid Architects' new space for the music of Bach; Björk's three week Biophilia residency; director Robert Wilson's The Life and Death of Marina Abramovi?, starring Abramovi?, Willem Dafoe and Antony; The xx performing in a hidden city centre space for audiences of just 60 and Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth.

The Festival works with co-commissioning partners around the world to create and present new productions, partnerships which not only help make these new commissions possible but also extend the audiences and lifespan of the shows. 28 MIF shows have gone on to have a life outside the Festival, visiting Park Avenue Armory, New York, Ruhrtriennale in Germany, Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Spoleto Festival Italy and many more.

In addition to income from co-commissioners and ticket sales, MIF receives support from private sponsorship, individuals and trusts and foundations. This money is raised by building on the solid support MIF enjoys from Manchester City Council and Arts Council England, our principal public funders.

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