Derby Theatre will spring into 2019 with a new adaptation of a young adult novel, a “funny and provocative” exploration of attitudes to multiculturalism in contemporary Britain and a new version of a Rudyard Kipling favourite.
The season starts with Sabrina Mahfouz’s fresh look at Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses which is told from the perspectives of two teenagers.
Noughts and Crosses is a “captivating love story set in a volatile, racially segregated society and explores the powerful themes of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world”.
It will be the first co-production between Pilot Theatre, Derby Theatre, Coventry’s Belgrade, Colchester’s Mercury Theatre and York Theatre Royal who have formed a partnership to develop theatre for younger audiences. Noughts and Crosses will run from Friday 1 until Saturday 16 February.
Derby Theatre in association with Tamasha will then produce and present What Fatima Did. It will be written by Atiha Sen Gupta who came up with Abi, a contemporary, one-woman play penned in response to Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, which ran in Derby in October 2018. What Fatima Did will take to the stage from Wednesday 27 February until Saturday 2 March.
Derby Theatre will present an adaptation of The Jungle Book from Friday 5 until Saturday 20 April.
Touring productions include London Classic Theatre’s My Mother Said I Never Should from 5 until 9 March, Avenue Q from 18 until 23 March, the Northern Broadsides and New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing from 26 until 30 March and a new adaptation of Henry James’s Turn of the Screw from 7 until 11 May.