Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre will reopen on Monday 17 May—the first day that the government’s roadmap allows—with socially distanced audiences seeing Joe Pasquale and Sarah Earnshaw in John Godber’s April in Paris which starts a UK tour at the Belgrade.
The theatre, which will be a key component of Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, will announce in June an autumn season of non-socially distanced work which will start on 1 September.
Deputy artistic director Justine Themen has commissioned a new digital version of Like There’s No Tomorrow, one of the first National Theatre Connections plays to be specifically commissioned for and created by young people. It will be available from Wednesday 19 May until Sunday 13 June.
The Belgrade will co-present with Paines Plough a festival of new plays and community-led activities in Roundabout from Monday 26 July until Sunday 8 August. Balisha Karra will direct Coventry-based playwright Frankie Meredith’s May Queen and the other plays that will be staged in repertory throughout the festival are Hungry by Chris Bush, Really Big and Really Loud by Phoebe Eclair-Powell and Black Love, with music and lyrics by Chinonyerem Odimba and music by Ben and Max Ringham.