The Tron Theatre is delighted to announce its Autumn/Winter 2015 season, a strong programme of new work as well as adaptations of classic texts, and with familiar faces and visiting companies alongside emergent talent and new voices in the sector. Highlights will include:
. Alison Peebles leading a sterling cast in Megan Barker's dark adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts, the Tron Theatre Company production at the centre of our main house programme.
. Another classic adaptation, with
Liz Lochhead's re-interpretation of
Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, What Goes Around.
. The return of
John Osborne, following up hit show
John Peel's Shed with an evening of performance poetry with BBC Radio 4 writer Molly Naylor.
. The fiercely unapologetic Once Upon A Time, exploring ageing and the passing of time, presented as part of Luminate: Scotland's creative ageing festival.
At the heart of the season will be the Tron Theatre Company production of Ghosts (7-24 October, Press Night: Friday 9 October, 7.45pm), Megan Barker's claustrophobically dark and gripping adaptation of the
Henrik Ibsen's original. Continuing our tradition of breathing new life into classic plays, we've engaged a sterling cast for this drama, led by Alison Peebles as Helen Alving, the local councillor whose carefully constructed life is shattered by revelations of political corruption and abuse. Directed by Andy Arnold and with the award-winning Neil Warmington designing, this promises to be a production that will pack both visual and dramatic power.
In the main auditorium, we offer up a diverse programme of work. Daniel Bye's brand new show drawing on the science of epidemics, Going Viral (1 Sept, 7.45pm), poses interesting questions about how things spread. Accessible, life-affirming performance poetry comes from Molly Naylor &
John Osborne (2 Sept, 7.45pm), in their first poetry tour, fresh from the success of their Sky 1 television sitcom After Hours.
Tamasha return after an acclaimed run in Spring 2014 with their production My Name Is. (3-5 Sept, 7.45pm), the story of Glasgow girl
Molly Campbell's apparent 'kidnap' to Pakistan by her father and ensuing media furore, and we're delighted to welcome the National Theatre of Scotland with their funny and raucously rude adaptation of Alan Warner's The Sopranos, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour (8-12 Sept, 7.45pm).
Liz Lochhead adapts
Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde into a sparking, contemporary sex comedy and riff on modern mores in What Goes Around (17-19 Sept, 7.45pm), two dancers and one trapeze artist, all aged over 65, explore ageing and the passing of time in Once Upon A Time (29-31 Oct, 7.45pm), as part of Luminate: Scotland's creative ageing festival, and the season is rounded off with AJ Taudevin's Mrs Barbour's Daughters (4-7 Nov, 7.45pm), charting a family history of sisterhood and betrayal interwoven with a social history of women's resistance and re-staged as part of the centenary celebrations of the Glasgow Rent Strikes.
The Changing House programme opens with the brilliant Shona Reppe and her new show for 5-8 year olds, Magic Sho (26 Sept, 1.30pm & 3.30pm) about a rabbit who never misses a trick and a magician who sometimes forgets to say the magic word. For one performance only, we present the Eden Court, Inverness production Not About Heroes (6 Oct, 8pm):
Stephen MacDonald's play about the friendship between Siegfried Sasson and Wilfred Owen, and how it unlocked Owen's genius, and the first play to be staged at the Tron Theatre when it opened in 1982.
The ephemeral nature of life, growing up and the bittersweet fallibility of memory are explored in Aby Watson's There's no point crying over spilt milk (14-17 Oct, 8pm), Donna Rutherford engages in an honest exploration of the experience of elders in the 21st century using the tradition of soup-making in Broth (21 & 22 Oct, 2pm & 8pm) and Victoria Beesley tells the incredible tale of loss, friendship and courage in My Friend Selma (23 &24 Oct, 8pm & 3pm).
Our Vic Bar programme goes from strength to strength, with Sunday Jazz and The Seven Song Club returning for the Autumn/Winter season and Blood of the Young present the Golden Arm Theatre Project (4 Nov, 8.30pm) an eclectic mixing of live music and theatre featuring new short works from some of Scotland's leading playwrights. Also for playwrights, our own event The Progressive Playwright continues monthly in the Changing House, incentivized this season with the offer of a £2000 bursary for one writer from the entire season, selected by an industry panel at the January 2016 event.
And finally of course, 'tis the season of panto. This year we've engaged David Ireland to write Sleeping Betty (27 Nov '15 - 3 Jan 2016, Press Night: Tue 1 December, 7.30pm) for our main house, with all the usual daft patter, slapstick, nonsense and some familiar faces; whilst Lisa Keenan devises and directs Snow Pals (28 Nov - 31 Dec) in our studio space, a show for wee ones aged 3-6 years about how cool friendships can be.
