Bec Martin announces her first season at New Diorama Theatre

Bec Martin has announced her first season at the helm of the north London venue the New Diorama Theatre.

Martin, who succeeded David Byrne as artistic director and CEO in January, has billed the season, which features three main house productions and a touring schools play, as “a battle cry, a new beginning and a statement of intent”.

It opens with Between the Lines (3 May to 1 June), co-produced with The Big House, a charity focussed on transforming the lives of care leavers and at-risk young people through the power of performance. Directed by The Big House’s artistic director Maggie Norris and co-written by grime MC Jammz (Poet in da Corner) and James Meteyard (Electrolyte, Redemption), the play with music examines “freedom of expression, the strength of community and the foundations of one of Britain’s most celebrated subcultures of rebel music”.

King Troll (The Fawn) (4 October to 2 November) is a collaboration between Sonali Bhattacharyya and Milli Bhatia, the writer/director duo behind works including Chasing Hares (Young Vic). A co-production with Kali Theatre, it’s billed as a “dystopian tale about the corrosive impact of state racism and the effect of the UK government’s hostile environment policy follows the monster within two migrant sisters.”

Bhattacharyya commented: “I’m so excited that King Troll (The Fawn), will be part of Bec Martin’s first season. Her enthusiasm for and commitment to this play – which is, to my knowledge, the first horror comedy about the UK border regime – points to a bold artist-led future for NDT, building on the incredible legacy of this venue.”

It’s followed by The Glorious French Revolution (or: why sometimes it takes a guillotine to get anything done) (14 November to 14 December) from YESYESNONO (Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist). Written and directed by company founder Sam Ward, it tells the story of “an insurrection in the past and what they’ve done to make sure nothing like that ever happens again”.

Performance duo emma + pj (Ghosts of the Near Future) will lead New Diorama’s primary schools touring project this year with The Shivers, a “high-stakes thriller for young audiences about spies, lies, and learning to trust your gut”.

Meanwhile recipients of New Diorama’s Edinburgh Untapped Awards, which support emerging companies at the Fringe, will be announced next week.

Martin said of her inaugural line-up: “This season is about power, what it means to take it, who holds our narratives, how to wrestle them back. Showing tenderness where there hasn’t been any, showing teeth where it’s deserved. In thinking about the theatre landscape there’s something I keep coming back to, it’s the idea of levels. A levelling.

“At first glance, the season looks like it falls into three categories: the main house, the schools show and the Untapped Award. We want to dismantle those categories. All the work is of a level: early career artists taken as seriously as industry veterans, schools audiences matter as much as the grown-ups, the fringe is as vital as the centre. New Diorama has historically been a theatre that aimed to level up artists on the fringes, I want to take that energy to new, bigger places. Now it’s not just about levelling up, it’s about levelling the structures above.”