Eleven new productions, seven world premières, three major revivals and a site-specific collaboration with Northampton Town Football Club will be included in the Made in Northampton 2017 season at the town’s Royal and Derngate.
Artistic director James Dacre said, “our Made in Northampton season again aims to present plays that question the most important issues of our time. The year 2016 has been one of seismic social and political change and our new season reflects this.
“With this season, we hope to understand the worker who feels abandoned by his country, the refugee evicted from their home, the generation that feels disenfranchised from politics and the households which have forgotten how to be families.
“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.
“We’ve programmed a mixture of new commissions, literary adaptations, classic plays and devised works which explore our need to belong to a family, place or country and offer life-affirming tales of characters who possess heroism, hope and humanity.”
As previously announced, the season begins with a touring revival of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman. Tim Pigott-Smith will play Willy Loman in Abigail Graham’s production which will play on the Royal stage from 8 until 29 April before touring.
The second major revival will be Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s exploration of migration and community, The Grapes of Wrath. Abbey Wright will direct the production from 9 until 20 May.
In a European première in June, Dacre will collaborate with composer Orlando Gough on Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s new adaptation of Homer’s An Iliad.
In the summer, the theatre, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art and Northampton Town Football Club will collaborate on The Twelfth Player which involves a tour of the Sixfields Stadium as audiences view the passionate world of football through three generations of a family of Cobblers supporters. It runs from 2 June until 2 July.
Simon Godwin will direct the regional première of Sam Holcroft’s comedy Rules for Living which follows what happens when an extended family gathers in the kitchen for a traditional Christmas and each of them rigidly follows their own rules for living. It runs from 8 until 30 September.
Lucy Bailey will direct a new interpretation of Love from a Stranger by Agatha Christie and Frank Vosper. It runs from 23 February until 16 March before touring the UK in 2018.
In 2017, Royal and Derngate will champion the work of two emerging companies, The Wardrobe Ensemble and simple8, who will both be making their main stage debuts.
In October, The Wardrobe Ensemble will première Education, Education, Education, charting the rise of New Labour through a secondary school, while simple8 will unveil its new adaptation of E M Forster’s A Passage to India in January 2018.