NT Premieres 13 Works in Five-Month TransformationDate: 18 March 2002
The National Theatre has confirmed programming details for its inaugural "Transformation" season, an ambitious £1.5 million project, first announced last August, to adapt the conventional 900-seat Lyttelton Theatre into two smaller spaces for new writing and more experimental work.
The five-month season, running from May to September 2002, will include 13 world premieres, which are aimed at younger audiences and which bring together a variety of young companies, directors and performers not normally seen at the National.
Amongst those who will be taking part in the Transformation season are Saffron Burrows, Fiona Shaw, Deborah Warner, Kathryn Hunter, Josette Bushell-Mingo, Marcello Magni, Thea Sharrock, Gawn Grainger, Richard Bean, Tanika Gupta, Gary Owen, Erica Whyman and Sean Holmes, while outside companies involved include Theatre National de Chaillot, Trestle Theatre Company and Mamaloucos Circus.
In the main Lyttelton, a 650-seat in-the-round space carved from the existing theatre, five major new productions will be mounted - including two adaptations of novels (Jeannette Winterson's Powerbook and John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany) and the first all-new dance-theatre collaboration, entitled Play Without Words, from award-winning choreographer Matthew Bourne since he left Adventures in Motion Pictures to set up his own company. The main-stage programme will also include The Adventures of the Stoneheads from Trestle Theatre Company (currently touring the UK with Island) and Aristophanes' comedy The Birds in a new circus version by Sean O'Brien.
The Lyttelton Loft, created out of the foyer now used as an exhibition space, will be an even more intimate 100-seat affair, where eight more premiere productions will have shorter runs of approximately a fortnight each. The Loft programme includes new plays by Roy Williams (Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads), Gary Owen (The Shadow of a Boy), Tanika Gupta (Sanctuary) and Owen McCafferty (Closing Time).
Commenting on the Transformation project, NT artistic director Trevor Nunn said: "I think it's vital we communicate a sense of the National's belief in its future and what it can accomplish. I am working for a thriving, refreshed, broad-based new audience,including a body of young people under 30 with a theatre-going habit; a new generation of artistic and administrative talent committed to taking the National forward; and an understanding of the varied potential within Denys Lasdun's famous building."
The two Lyttelton stages will share a bar area that is also unashamedly aimed at the younger audience. It will feature an Internet café and a barbecue area as well as cheaper beer and wine and a late drinking license. The Lyttelton productions will also have much cheaper tickets, ranging from £6 to £18 (compared to £10 to £32 for normal NT productions).
To further signal the importance of luring this new contingent to the National complex, the NT has drafted in outside support from Mick Gordon. The former artistic director of London's Gate Theatre, renowned for its new work, is acting as artistic associate for the Transformation project, working alongside associate producer Joseph Smith.
The Transformation is a temporary feature. At the end of the five-month season, the Lyttelton will be returned to its current proscenium arch form to house a revival of one of the 20th century's greatest stage classics - Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Glenn Close. That said, assuming the Transformation season does work, the scaled-down spaces can be re-installed for future seasons of new work.
- by Terri Paddock
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