National Theatre of Scotland announces 2015 'Belong' season

The National Theatre of Scotland has announced its new season, which runs from January to June 2015 under the banner 'Belong'.

According to press material, the new season offers "exciting new contemporary drama, international new writing and tours, major new adaptations of Scottish books and award-winning revivals, taking the Company from Shetland to Los Angeles."

Highlights include a new season of collaborations with A Play, A Pie and A Pint, featuring three new plays by Russian and Ukrainian writers, which runs at Glasgow's Òran Mór on 23 March, 4 May and 25 May 2015, and at the Traverse in Edinburgh from 30 March.

In May, Scottish theatremaker Cora Bissett will team up with performance poet Yusra Warsama to explore the issue of Female Genital Mutilation in Rites. Billed as an "important and unflinching new piece of documentary drama theatre", it marks NTS's first co-production with the Contact, Manchester, where it will tour alongside Edinburgh and Glasgow from 5 to 23 May 2015.

And fresh from the success of The James Plays, NTS artistic director Laurie Sansom returns to the Scottish stage with his new version of Muriel Spark's noveln The Driver's Seat, in a "darkly comic" production featuring set design from Ana Inés Jabares Pita. It runs in Edinburgh and Glasgow from 19 June to 4 July 2015.

Other touring work includes Yer Granny, a new comedy from Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell set in a Scots-Italian fish and chip shop. And in January and February the NTS's hit production of Let the Right One In transfers to St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn following its recent run in the West End.

Laurie Sansom said: "Most of us want to belong. The bosom of the family might make us feel safe, or like running to the hills. Sometimes it's not always easy to fit in. The embrace of community can protect and it can stifle.

"These are stories of communities under pressure from within, friends and family rallying round, and people making incredible journeys to escape and invent new identities. This year we hope you will join us to explore what it means to feel part of a gang or out there on your own."