National Theatre Wales announces 2018 season, including festival to celebrate the NHS

National Theatre Wales has announced its plans for 2018, with a variety of shows occurring across the country.

The company will present Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes' The Storm Cycle, as part of a three-year collaboration. Formed of six parts, two shown each year through to 2020, the Cycle will be performed across different parts of Wales. Pearson and Brookes have now been working together for over 20 years, and have created a series of large scale works for National Theatre Wales including The Persians, Coriolan/us and Iliad.

The first two parts will be entitled Nothing Remains the Same and Wild Scenes at Cardiff (1919). The former runs in Ceredigion from 15 to 17 February, while the latter will run at the Tabernacle Church in Cardiff city centre from 21 to 24 March.

In July 2018, the company will host NHS70: A Festival, celebrating the 70th birthday of the British institution. The month-long programme will include a variety of acts highlighting the role of the NHS in the modern day. Production company Oily Cart will present an underwater experience in schools and hospitals, aimed at young people, with tailored performances for those with learning disabilities, those on the autism spectrum, and another for the deafblind.

Dance company Migrations, French choreographer and dancer Julie Nioche and choreographers Filiz Sizanli and Mustafa Kaplan will present an immersive dance show to be performed in a medical facility in north Wales. Welsh musician Gruff Rhys will also write, record and release a song paying tribute to the NHS.

Welsh comedian Elis James will host a night of comedy in Carmarthen, while the company will also present five new solo shows entitled Love Letters to the NHS.

On 20 April, National Theatre Wales and theatre company Junoon will present a new piece entitled Sisters at the Weston Studio in the Millennium Centre. Based on the lives of women from the Indian diaspora, the show is part of the India Wales season.

The company will also collaborate with Quarantine to present a new show entitled English, analysing the nature of the language within a bilingual country, in June 2018. The show runs as part of the Festival of Voice Cardiff.

In September 2018, artistic director Kully Thiarai will present The Tide Whisperer by Louise Wallwein, designed by Camilla Clark. An immersive show, the piece aims to confront the realities of modern displacement and mass movement. The performance will be presented on a moving boat across the Tenby harbour.

Thiarai said: "We’re inviting audiences to join us in locations across Wales and take a moment to walk in others’ shoes, be they Indian women or migrants from all over the world, NHS staff or patients past and present. All of these people, from all walks of life, and from Mumbai to Tenby, have extraordinary stories to tell."