Theatre News

Edinburgh’s Traverse Announces 2011 Season

| London's West End |

22 December 2010

Scotland’s new writing theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse has announced its Spring Summer 2011 season with a month long residency by the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS), a miniature festival called Reveal, which will present plays from Brazil, Venezuela, Coloumbia and Argentina, as well as work by Pol Heyvaert, Iain Finlay MacLeod, Gary McNair and Molly Taylor, celebrating the NTS’ fifth birthday. The residency will run from 15 February to 19 March 2011.

Elsewhere in the new season, the Traverse Theatre Company produces Rona Munro’s new play, Pandas, a romantic-comedy-thriller set in Edinburgh and China will run from 19 April to 7 May. Munro’s last work for the Traverse was The Last Witch, co-produced by Edinburgh International Festival in 2008. Pandas will be directed by Rebecca Gatward, who collaborated with Munro on her 2006 play The Indian Boy for the RSC.

The Tron’s production of Gary Owen’s Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco being presented from 1 to 4 June and the NTS returns to the Traverse with its new production of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens from 7 to 12 June.

The Arches and Traverse Theatre Company bring emerging theatre makers to stage a production at the Traverse and The Arches with Platform 18 from 14 to 17 April. ATC and Soho Theatre will also take Hattie Naylor‘s Ivan and the Dogs which played the Soho in October this year to the Traverse from 21 to 23 April whilst Irish theatre company Blue Raincoat follow last year’s The Third Policeman, with a second Flann O’Brien adaptation, At Swim Two Birds from 26 to 28 May.

Amongst other companies visiting the Traverse in the new year are Gare St Lazare Players, an Irish company making their Traverse debut with their Beckett trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable which will run on 21 and 22 January; Random Accomplice return to the Traverse with Smalltown, a comedy by DC Jackson, Johnny McKnight and Douglas Maxwell from 24 to 26 March and Rob Evans‘ Beauty and the Beast, called Caged which is presented by Catherine Wheels on 31 March and 1 April 2011.

The Traverse has also promised a second piece of ‘guerrilla theatre’ to turn a satirical eye on the Scottish elections in May, the project follows the success of last years Gordon Brown: A Life in Theatre. Full details will be announced later in the season.

Dominic Hill, the Traverse’s artistic director will also will direct his production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Philip Massinger‘s The City Madam which the RSC will present in May 2011. Hill’s last production with the company was as an assistant director in 1997. The show marks the first first major production of Massinger’s play since 1964.