Theatre News

Traverse Announces Goat in Packed Spring 2010 Season

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21 December 2009

Following
its inaugural Autumn Festival, the Traverse Theatre announces its programme for
Spring 2010, a season which sees the venue continue to play host to new work
from a diverse range of art forms. The season officially opens with the 20^th
year of Class Act
in January and continues up to the Traverse Theatre Company commission Any Given Day by
Linda McLean in June.

Speaking
about the new season, Artistic Director Dominic Hill said “Over the past year, the Traverse has established
itself as a home for new work of all kinds. We recently wrapped up our
inaugural Autumn Festival where, for two weeks, the Theatre played host to
everything from contemporary opera to 3D dance instillation. I think that our
Spring 2010 programme further cements this position, with a season of new
drama, music and dance”.

The
Theatre will be introducing three of its own shows this season. Dominic Hill
will direct the Scottish Premiere of Edward
Albee’s rarely performed masterpiece, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? a funny and shocking
play about social taboos, which opens in April. This is followed in June by a
new Traverse commission from Linda McLean,
called Any Given Day,
a searing, poetic and hard-hitting new play by one of Scotland’s leading
playwrights. What We
Know by Pamela Carter
in February marks the second installment in the Theatre’s experimental Traverse Too strand, in a production
featuring BAFTA award-winner Kate Dickie.

There
will be a month of World Premieres in March with the hugely popular A Play, A Pie and A Pint,
season of lunchtime theatre in collaboration with Òran Mór. This year’s programme features five new plays
from Simon Stephens, Graham Eatough and
Maggie Rose, Ella Hickson, Gregory Burke and Zinnie Harris – and the admission
price includes a pie and a pint.

Now in
its second year, Puppet Animation Scotland
festival of puppetry and visual theatre, Manipulate continues in February in
association with the Traverse Theatre.
Companies from Germany, Spain, Portugal,
England and Scotland
will present a variety of film and live puppetry in a week long celebration of
visual theatre.

In March
the Traverse will host exclusive Scottish runs from two internationally
acclaimed companies; ATC make a
welcome return to the Traverse after their 2008 production of The Brothers Size with the European
Premiere of Eurydice by
celebrated US
playwright Sarah Ruhl. This is followed by an innovative new take on Chekhov from the Lyric Hammersmith and Filter
with Three Sisters. Director Sean Holmes also
directed Simon Stephens’ play Pornography
for the Traverse during the 2008 festival.

Brand
new at the Traverse is Scottish Opera,
Five: 15.
New work from five teams of writers and composers drawn from Scotland’s creative
industries will be performed at the Traverse in May. The Traverse is delighted
to host this season with Scottish Opera, who began their partnership with the theatre during the Autumn Festival 09.

World
Premieres in the season include the production by Random Accomplice of Douglas
Maxwell’s tense new thriller Promises Promises, and a new version of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector
by Communicado. There is a
groundbreaking double bill of new work from the Arches New Work Award
plus three new plays from Stellar Quines.

Physical
theatre and dance form a strong strand of the new season at the Traverse. In
February, Spymonkey perform a
glorious mis-telling of Moby
Dick, with Tom Dale
Company bringing their raw,
unpredictable brand of dance to the theatre with Roam. This features specially commissioned
tracks from electronic producers Shackleton and Sion. The Traverse is delighted
to welcome back Scottish Dance Theatre,
who were a sell-out hit during the Autumn Festival 09. They will perform two
brand new works in April, NQR
and The
Life and Times of Girl A.