Royal Court announces new shows include transfer of Tony-winner ”Dana H.” with Deirdre O’Connell

The Royal Court Theatre has announced its programme for April to August 2023, which will showcase four new works as well as a Tony Award-winning Broadway transfer in 2024.

The season will begin with No I.D. by Tatenda Shamiso and directed by Sean Ting-Hsuan Wang, running from Tuesday 18 April to Saturday 6 May, which tells the story of his experience as a Black transgender immigrant in the UK. The show transfers from the VAULT Festival.

Hope has a Happy Meal by Tom Fowler and directed by Lucy Morrison, will then follow from Saturday 3 June to Saturday 8 July. This play is a frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country.

Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning playwright Michael Wynne returns to the Royal Court with Cuckoo from Thursday 6 July to Saturday 19 August. This new dark comedy, in partnership with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, will be directed by Royal Court artistic director Vicky Featherstone.

Lastly, Word-Play by Rabiah Hussain and directed by Nimmo Ismail will explore how language seeps into public consciousness and run from Thursday 20 July to Saturday 26 August in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

The UK premiere of the Tony Award-winning Dana H. by Lucas Hnath will be presented in January 2024 at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from Tuesday 16 January to Saturday 9 March. Deirdre O’Connell will reprise her award-winning tour-de-force performance as Dana, a psych ward chaplain who was held captive by a patient in a series of Florida motels for five months.

The play tells Dana Higginbotham’s remarkable true story in her own words and using her own voice, with recorded interviews reconstructed for the stage by Dana’s son, playwright Lucas Hnath, and meticulously lip-synced by O’Connell.

Directed by Les Waters, the play was first presented at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2020 and went on to receive three Obie citations, two Lortel Awards, and the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Unique Theatrical Experience.

The theatre has launched its first openly accessible archive called Living Archive, featuring over 1600 plays, and a community storytelling project called Machloket.

In partnership with Tash Hyman, Nick Cassenbaum, and Take Stock Exchange, the project will create a nationwide conversation exploring what it means to be Jewish in the UK today, and will work with Jewish community groups across the UK.

The Living Archive will hold information on over 1600 plays staged at the Royal Court from 1956 to the present day. Users can search through the site or take pathways created by guest curators-writers who will be regularly invited to lead users to their particular passions and inspirations. The archive will be constantly evolving, with ways for everyone to contribute to and enhance the content.

Featherstone, artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be announcing this varied and beautiful season of work. All the writers and projects are questioning in very different ways our need for community, a need to belong and be understood, a place which holds us.

“Added to that we are finally able to give the first opportunity in our amazing history at the Royal Court to create and open up a Living Archive, questioning what archive is and how it can help us think about the future. We hope that people will enjoy engaging with us in all these different ways, looking both into our past and being immersed in stories which are fiercely about the now.”