The Dukes new artistic director has personal and professional reasons for choosing Educating Rita as her first spring production at the Lancaster venue.
Sarah Punshon said: “it’s a play about someone who changes their life through the arts and that’s what we do here.”
Her personal reason for choosing Educating Rita is because Sarah’s mum, much like Rita, returned to education after leaving school at 15 and both mother and daughter went to university in the same year.
Educating Rita, which runs from April 5 to 14, is Willy Russell’s exploration of class, privilege and the power of literature.
Eager to escape trivial conversations at work, Rita enrols on an Open University course where she meets her tutor, Frank, a frustrated poet, tutor and borderline alcoholic.
Educating Rita will be the first co-production between the Dukes and the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, both theatres-in-the-round.
The play is presented at the New Vic from April 18 to May 5 as part of their season of plays marking women’s suffrage.