Jamie Vartan News

Traverse Theatre Announces Spring/Summer 2017 Programme

The Traverse announces its Spring/Summer 2017 season today, December 12. The work presented has been selected to directly address a mix of both long-existent and emergent social, political and technological challenges, and comes from some of the most exciting companies in the UK.

 Blue Raincoat, Ireland's longest running theatre ensemble are celebrating their 25th anniversary with a diverse programme of work which will take them from their native Sligo to New York and Barcelona, performing in the company's myriad theatrical styles.

It seems ironic--to me at least--that New York's venerable City Opera would be returning to life at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, just as the “Prototype: Opera/Theatre/Now” festival was finishing up its run at alternative venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Prototype “unleashed a powerful wave of opera-theatre and music-theatre from a new generation of classical and post-classical composers and librettists”--their words, not mine, but I won't dispute it--while City is doing a warhorse.

St. Ann's Warehouse will continue the inaugural season in its new waterfront theater with the American Premiere of Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy and writer-director Enda Walsh's thrilling new opera The Last Hotel, in a Landmark Productions / Wide Open Opera production. Singers Claudia Boyle, Robin Adams and Katherine Manley, actor Mikel Murfi, and an ensemble of New York's finest contemporary players, conducted alternately by André de Ridder and Alan Pierson, will deliver this “searingly powerful new chamber work” (The Guardian). Presented by St. Ann's Warehouse and co-presented withPROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now andIrish Arts Center, The Last Hotel comes to New York after tremendously acclaimed engagements at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Royal Opera House in London.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE present the fourth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running today, January 6, through January 17, 2016, in New York City.

Landmark Productions / Wide Open Opera Show Comes to the New St. Ann's Warehouse Steinberg Theater January 8-17, 2016 for Seven Performances Only, Following Highly Acclaimed Engagements at Edinburgh International Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival and London's Royal Opera House

St. Ann's Warehouse will continue the inaugural season in its new waterfront theater with the American Premiere of Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy and writer-director Enda Walsh's thrilling new opera The Last Hotel, in a Landmark Productions / Wide Open Opera production. Singers Claudia Boyle, Robin Adams and Katherine Manley, actor Mikel Murfi, and an ensemble of New York's finest contemporary players, conducted alternately by André de Ridder and Alan Pierson, will deliver this “searingly powerful new chamber work” (The Guardian). Presented by St. Ann's Warehouse and co-presented withPROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now andIrish Arts Center, The Last Hotel comes to New York after tremendously acclaimed engagements at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Royal Opera House in London.

C.S.Lewis' timeless story The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is a perfect fit for the festive season. It has had several stage reincarnations over the years and the fact that it has been revisited again at the Birmingham Rep is a testament to its appeal. The theatre last staged the show in 2009 as a co-production with West Yorkshire Playhouse whom presented the original production in both 2004 and 2007 to critical acclaim. This year it is solely produced by Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company and directed by Tessa Walker, who returns after directing A Christmas Carol at the theatre in 2013.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE are pleased to announce full casting for the fourth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running January 6-17, 2016, in New York City. Deemed "suddenly indispensable" (New Yorker), this 'bracingly innovative' Festival, founded, directed, and curated by Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of BMP), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), has quickly become 'a point of reference" in the field (The New York Times) over three astoundingly successful seasons.

Birmingham Repertory Theatre is off to Narnia this Christmas with a magical adaptation of C. S. Lewis's much-loved novel, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from 20 November to 16 January.

Something strange is suppressed under a polite meeting inside a drab hotel. Change and stasis regularly collide in Enda Walsh's drama but transcendence feels possible in Donnacha Dennehy's music

Blue Raincoat Theatre Company return to the Traverse in June with their new play, First Cosmonaut, marking the Irish company's fifth consecutive year performing at the Edinburgh venue.

Blue Raincoat Theatre Company return to the Traverse in June with their new play, First Cosmonaut, marking the Irish company's fifth consecutive year performing at the Edinburgh venue.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's warm and funny new play Khandan (Family) premieres at Birmingham Repertory Theatre this May.

Marking a triumphant return from a ten year absence, D'Oyly Carte Opera Company bursts back onto the stage with an historic collaboration with Scottish Opera; taking an all-singing, all-dancing, richly theatrical production of The Pirates of Penzance on an extended, major UK tour following its premiere at Theatre Royal Glasgow tonight 15th May 2013.

Marking a triumphant return from a ten year absence, D'Oyly Carte Opera Company bursts back onto the stage with an historic collaboration with Scottish Opera; taking an all-singing, all-dancing, richly theatrical production of The Pirates of Penzance on an extended, major UK tour following its premiere at Theatre Royal Glasgow on the 15th May 2013.

The Evening Standard Theatre Awards, established in 1955, are presented annually for outstanding achievements in London Theatre, and this year's nominations longlist has just been announced. Sponsored by the Evening Standard newspaper, this year's shortlist will be announced on November 12 and the winners revealed on November 25.

Following an immensely acclaimed world premiere at the Galway Arts Festival this past summer, St. Ann's Warehouse and Imagine Ireland will present the American Premiere of Misterman, November 30-December 21 at St. Ann's Warehouse. Murphy makes his American stage debut with a tour-de-force solo performance in this Landmark Productions / Galway Arts Festival co-production, his first collaboration with playwright/director Enda Walsh since Disco Pigs, which launched both men's careers 15 years ago.