Tron Theatre Announces Spring-Summer 2020 Season
Tron Theatre's Spring-Summer 2020 season is full-to-the-brim with some of the best work currently touring, as well as Tron Theatre Company's own theatrical offerings, which this year involve two high-profile collaborations on exciting new work. Highlights will include:
• The Metamorphosis - our co-production with the internationally renowned Vanishing Point with Matthew Lenton's highly inventive take on Franz Kafka's best-known novel.
• A hilarious, satirical musical about the climate emergency, Thank You For Doing Nothing, from the company that created A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad).
• The world premiere of The Secret Garden, Red Bridge Arts adaptation of the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
• Underwood Lane, continuing Tron Theatre's relationship with John Byrne and in co-production with Renfrewshire Leisure, the world premiere of a new piece in John's inimitable style.
Vanishing Point in co-production with Tron Theatre Company and Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione Company will present Matthew Lenton's new version of Kafka's The Metamorphosis (10-21 March, Press Night: Thu 12 March, 7.45pm). Taking what is probably one of Kafka's best-known works, Matthew's fresh and unpredictable style will shed new light on the complexity and contradiction of modernity. Our summer production this year will be the world premiere of John Byrne's Underwood Lane (2-18 July, 7.45pm). Created in co-production with Renfrewshire Leisure, Underwood Lane is vintage John Byrne, written in memory of his Paisley buddy, Gerry Rafferty and has it all: style, fierce love rivalry, broken hearts, dodgy dealers, religion, sex and death.
The main auditorium season opens with Celtic Connections (17 Jan - 1 Feb), after which our theatre programme gets underway with the return of Mark Thomas and his new show 50 Things About Us (6-8 Feb) a show that he describes as a sort of funny national edition of Who Do You Think You Are. Following their hugely successful piece for younger audiences, Black Beauty, Red Bridge Arts have adapted another classic children's novel and we're excited to have the world premiere of The Secret Garden (Tue 11 & Wed 12 Feb). Fringe First Award-winners LUNG bring us Trojan Horse (13-15 Feb), the story of a community torn apart by racial division, 'British values' and the culture of Prevent and we're particularly pleased to be including Traverse Theatre Company's frank, unflinching and gripping hit about class, culture and appropriation Mouthpiece (27-29 Feb).
Glasgow International Comedy Festival are back with us this year (24-29 Mar) and Tricky Hat Productions performance group The Flames challenge taboos surrounding ageing in Don't Stop Me Now (Wed 1 Apr). Matthew Xia's first production as artistic director of Actors Touring Company will be Amsterdam (2-4 Apr), a strikingly original and audacious play in which stories of a devastating past are compellingly reconstructed to try and make sense of the present. Award-winning Silent Uproar return to the Tron after their sold out run of A Super Happy Story About Feeling Super Sad with Thank You For Doing Nothing (16-18 Apr), a hilarious satirical musical about the climate emergency and the men who profit from it. Intelligent and captivating, The Spinners (24 & 25 Apr) is Al Seed and Australian choreographer and dance Lina Limosani's exhilarating ride into myth and imagination. 2Magpies Theatre bring the last visiting main house show of the season with Ventoux (28 Apr) which charts the parallel lives of Tour de France 2000 champions Lance Armstrong and Marco Patani asking the question 'how far will we go to succeed?'
Our Changing House programme opens with Summerhall's 2018 Lustrum Award-winning show The Political History of Smack and Crack (20-22 Feb), an angry, funny love-song to a lost generation while performance artist Leyla Josephine attempts to understand what it means to be a dad in her unapologetic show Daddy Drag (26-29 Feb). Live music, dance, spoken word and video interweave in Theatre Gu Leòr's new collaboration with the band WHYTE in association with Tron Theatre, Maim (6-14 Mar, Press Night: Tue 10 Mar, 8pm) which gives voice to the frustrations of a generation who care deeply about the crisis facing their land and their language and Within Sight (19-21 Mar) is Ellen Renton's new spoken-word theatre show based on her personal experience of living with albinism, addressing ableism within our society. Common Sense: A Vague Recollection Of A Show (26-28 Mar) is a poetic and visual work where the audience embark upon a journey with a writer who creates a new work in front of their eyes. This dynamic production from Portugal as already been performed in Germany and Belgium and this will be its UK premiere.
In our Vic Bar all the regular music sessions are back including Sunday Jazz, The Seven Song Club and Folkify, Robin Cairns will compere a series of Poetry Slams, including the annual Slam Championships at the start of the year and Tandem Writing Collective, are back with And Then What, a mix of new shorts as well as pieces from previous events that have now been developed into full-length plays. We continue to invest in our Tron Creative and Participation programmes, providing opportunities to engage with the Tron in a range of ways for artists, audiences and the community, and we're ever-proud of our ability to be accessible and welcoming to everyone who wants to connect with us. On the back of this and in the spirit of us never standing still, we are making more creative space available by opening up the Victorian Bar and, in the process, closing the Kitchen and restaurant adjacent to this space. The main Bar will remain open and indeed continue to be the social heart of the Tron, but we see our priority as being to provide as much space as we can for artists to make work and we're extremely excited by this development, which will come into effect at the start of the new year.
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The Sleeping Beauty Royal Albert Hall (6/25-6/28) |
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Hater Gilded Balloon Patter House (8/05-8/31) |
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The Searchers and Hollies Experience, Twickenham, The Exchange, Sat 29th Aug 2026 The Exchange (8/29-8/29) |
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Baga Chipz - Bagz to Riches - Nottingham Nottingham Arts Theatre (9/16-9/16) |
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Count Arthur Strong - And Its Goodnight From Me! Theatre Royal Winchester (5/02-5/02) |
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THE HAUNTED at The Underworld - London The Underworld (10/08-10/08) |
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Murder Trial Tonight V - Death in the Family Vaillant Live, Derby (2/06-2/06) |
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The Scarlet Pimpernel - Kingskerswell/ Newton Abbot - period drama theatre Kingskerswell Village hall (7/04-7/04) |
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Trouble in Tahiti and The Seven Deadly Sins — ONE NIGHT ONLY (20 August, Opera Holland Park Theatre) Opera Holland Park Theatre (8/20-8/20) |
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Baga Chipz - Bagz to Riches - Penzance Ritz Penzance (9/12-9/12) |