Reading Rep sets out its inaugural season
It’s a bold company these days which
launches itself with a challengingly contrasted three-show season.
The newly established Reading Repertory Theatre tested the ground in
July with a production of Pinter‘s The Dumb Waiter
in the Studio Theatre of Reading College’s Performing Arts Centre.
Its success has led to this longer-term fully-professional venture.
Neil McCurley have made a new musical adaptation of Dickens‘ A
Christmas Carol which will run from 24 December (most
appropriately) until 2 January. Stacey also directs the spring show,
Strindberg‘s Miss Julie, which previews from 1
April, opens on 4 April and plays until 12 April. The summer show is
Osborne‘s Look Back in Anger, previewing from 22
July, opening on 24 July and running until 2 August.
The Studio Theatre itself is a flexible
space, seating only around 60 playgoers at a time.
Reading Rep
however is not prepared simply to mount productions, it seeks to
involve itself actively in arts education and with the area’s
culturally diverse community through its residency at Reading
College. Funding has come from the Borough Council, the National
Lottery and the College itself.
Alan Stacey, commercial director of
London’s Young Vic, is chairman of the board of directors. The
artistic board includes Robert Brustein, who founded the Yale
Repertory and American Repertory Theaters, and Anatoly Smeliansky,
associate artistic director of the Moscow Arts Theatre and head of
its School for Academic Studies.
Besides Stacey, the staff includes
Aidan Grounds (producer), Katia Cole (head of education) and Timothy
James (community engagement director). Between them they hope to
place enterprise, experience and employability at the centre of
Reading Rep’s outreach work while providing theatre-goers with a mix
of established national and intenational drama, musical revivals and a commitment to new
writing of the highest quality.
