From 2015, there are to be major changes to the Royal Shakespeare Company visits to Newcastle.
There will be no season of the kind which the city has enjoyed since 1977, with a number of productions running at the Theatre Royal and in other theatres. Instead next year the company's small touring group First Encounter will bring its annual production for young people to the city: the 90 minute The Famous Victories of Henry V will be performed in schools and at the Theatre Royal during the summer.
2016 will see a special touring production of A Midsummer Night's Dream opening at Northern Stage but there will be no major productions at the Theatre Royal until, at the earliest, 2017.
The changes were announced by the RSC's Deputy Artistic Director Erica Whyman, who was Artistic Director at Northern Stage for seven years until she left to join the RSC last year.
The changes, she said, are due to the changing pattern of theatre-going in Newcastle.
"My perception from living in the city," she said, "was that at that time, people went to three or four shows in a month and then they didn’t go to the theatre much for the rest of the year."
Now she says people go to the Theatre Royal, Live Theatre and Northern Stage throughout the year—which she describes as "a really healthy thing"—and this is what has driven the change to the RSC season. Not many people, she thinks, are likely to see six plays over a month now.
She suggests that more new work will be developed with Live Theatre from 2017, as used to happen in previous years.
Earlier seasons also included productions at the Peoples' Theatre where, for example, the RSC produced the Spanish Golden Age season when Northern Stage was closed for refurbishment.
The final full season, which includes the two Henry IV plays and Two Gentlemen of Verona (which are currently playing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford), runs from 25 September to 11 October.