Theatre News

Gate stages new Trojan Women & Norris’ Purple Heart

Christopher Haydon has announced his second season as artistic director of the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill.

Titled Aftermath, the season focuses on the impact of conflict and the damage inflicted by war, following on from the Resist! season that centred on stories of rebels and revolutionaries.

It opens with award-winning poet Caroline Bird’s radical new adaptation of the Euripides’ tragedy The Trojan Women (8 November-15 December 2012), directed by Haydon.  

This will be followed, from 28 February to 6 April 2013, by the UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Bruce Norris’ early work Purple Heart. Set in 1972 in the American midwest, the play centres on a woman trying to rebuild her life after her husband is killed in Vietnam.

Christopher Haydon said today: “My opening season, which focussed on rebels and revolutionaries, sparked many questions for us – in the main, how does the human spirit survive when the world around it splinters? From here the Aftermath season was born.

“Revolutions are traumatic and, as can be seen currently in Syria, they can easily spill over in to all out conflict. So it is war – or more specifically the destruction that a war leaves in its wake – that we will be tackling in two very different ways in the new season.”