Leicester’s Curve is to stage a “dementia-friendly” performance of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!.
The theatre said the idea was to “tailor the theatre experience to meet the needs of people living with dementia, their family, friends and carers so that they can all come along and enjoy the performance in arelaxed and supportive environment”.
Chief executive Chris Stafford and artistic director Nikolai Foster said, “in the past few years we’ve grown the number of access performances significantly and we’re thrilled to be adapting our production of Oliver! for people living with dementia and their families. We hope this will be the first of many more dementia-friendly performances at Curve.”
The dementia-friendly performance of Oliver! will differ only in subtle ways, including leaving the house lights on during the performance, providing quiet areas and altering some of the sound and lighting cues. It will be presented on Wednesday 13 January.
In 2015, Curve won the promotion-of-diversity accolade at the UK Theatre Awards.