Royal & Derngate announces new season

The Royal & Derngate in Northampton has announced its new Made in Northampton season for 2017.

As part of the line-up, artistic director James Dacre will collaborate with Orlando Gough – who worked on King John – on an Obie-winning version of Homer's The Iliad (16 June to 8 July). Set during our age, the piece has the main voice of the Poet as a refugee evicted from his country.

Director Abbey Wright will also revive Frank Galati's adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (9 to 20 May). The piece examines resilience in the face of catastrophe and will feature a large community chorus with live music from Matt Regan.

Elsewhere in the season, the theatre will team up with Nothampton Town Football Club and the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art gallery, on The Twelfth Player (3 June to 2 July). The piece will use interactive technology to give the story of Cobblers fans over seventy years. The piece will be site-specific, taking place at the Sixfields Stadium.

Tim Pigott-Smith will be part of the season, with the already announced production of Death of a Salesman (8 to 29 April), which opens at the theatre before touring the UK.

The theatre will also produce the regional premiere of Sam Holcroft's comedy Rules for Living, after it opened at the National Theatre last year. Lucy Bailey will also revive Agatha Christie and Frank Vosper's Love from a Stranger in February 2018 following her work on Gaslight last year.

Emerging theatre companies The Wardrobe Ensemble and Simple8 will also feature in the Royal & Derngate new season. Wardrobe stage the premiere of Education, Education, Education (10 to 14 October) about New Labour seen through the eyes of secondary school staff. While Simple8 bring an adaptation of A Passage to India (22 to 20 January 2018) to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence.

Dacre said: "It’s as ambitious a season as we’ve ever produced and is shaped by a belief that the art of storytelling is as important a way of making sense of our lives in the internet age, as it was for the ancient Greeks, one of whose iconic tales we are dramatising.

"We have programmed a wide variety of work that focuses on belonging and community…whilst really thinking about the role of what a theatre is in national and political debate. A sports stadium is no less a political and theatrical place as the theatre and partnering with a local sports team has really highlighted the similarities between what we all do. "