Nottingham Playhouse has announced a “bold” new season despite having its local government funding cut.
The theatre has lost the whole of its £94,500 annual grant from Nottinghamshire County Council which is being forced to save £154m over the next three years.
The season includes three plays exploring Time and Memory and the return of one of 2013’s successes, Matthew Spangler’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner which is embarking on a national tour. It returns to Nottingham from Friday 29 August until Saturday 6 September.
May marks the return of the Nottingham European Arts Theatre Festival which began in Nottingham in 2011. neat14 will feature work from Spain, Croatia, Poland, Canada and Germany among many other countries.
Nottingham Playhouse will host some of the festival which runs from Friday 23 May until Sunday 1 June.
A new community project, Mass Bolero will open the festival. An eight-minute film features community groups, schools, organisations and individuals recreating Bolero, which secured gold medals for Nottingham’s Olympic ice dance champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.
In its autumn season Nottingham Playhouse will present three plays by British writers that use two time frames to explore the impact of the past on the present.
In Time and the Conways, J B Priestley explores how the optimism at the end of World War I was replaced by cynicism and discontent en route to World War II. Nottingham Playhouse associate director Fiona Buffini directs the play which runs from 12 until 27 September.
Peter Arnott’s new play Propaganda Swing (3 until 18 October) tells the story of an American journalist remembering his time in Berlin during World War II and his unwilling involvement in the Nazi propaganda programme. Coventry Belgrade’s artistic director Hamish Glen directs.
In Arcadia (31 October until 15 November) Tom Stoppard explores how we can never fully understand the past and how the journey to the future is constant and unchangeable. Nottingham Playhouse artistic director Giles Croft directs.