Sixteen venues will present a selection of local, regional and European work over 27 days in the Nottingham European Arts and Theatre Festival (neat 16).
The festival began in 2011 and runs every two years. The 2016 programme celebrates the city’s being awarded UNESCO City of Literature status.
Giles Croft, artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse, one of the venues taking part, said, “in this third iteration of the neat festival we once again celebrate our importance as a European city by offering a richly diverse programme. The work for neat16 demonstrates the strength and ambition of the city’s cultural offer and proudly asserts our literary heritage.”
One of the highlights will be Altitude Sickness by Nottinghamshire author Stephen Lowe. The county’s legendary writer D H Lawrence wrote the first scene of a play, Altitude, based on people he knew in New Mexico. He did not finish the story but Lowe has given voice to the world that Lawrence inhabited in the last years of his life. Altitude Sickness will be performed in the Djanogly Theatre at Lakeside Arts on Tuesday 17 May.
Lawrence is also featured in D H Lawrence By Night and By Day. A short, unfinished Tennessee Williams play about four friends including Lawrence will be read in public for the first time and will be paired with Lawrence’s autobiographical play The Fight for Barbara. Nottingham Playhouse will stage the event on its main stage on Tuesday and Wednesday, 31 May and 1 June.
Another highlight will be Nottinghamshire playwright Michael Pinchbeck’s The Trilogy, a three-act devised performance with each act being inspired by a Shakespeare play. The Beginning is an interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream while The Middle is a deconstruction of Hamlet and The End is triggered by a stage direction in The Winter’s Tale. It will be presented on the main stage at Nottingham Playhouse on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 June.
Pinchbeck’s previous plays for Nottingham Playhouse include The White Album, about the Beatles’ seminal recording, in 2006, and The Ashes, which focused on England's 1932 cricket tour of Australia, in 2011.
Spymonkey’s The Complete Deaths, all 75 onstage deaths in the works of William Shakespeare, will be recreated at Nottingham Playhouse from Thursday until Saturday, 9 to 11 June.
The Theatre Royal will host Rona Munro’s The James Plays, a modern trilogy of history plays that brings to life three generations of Stewart kings who ruled Scotland in the 15th century, on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 June.
Opera North will stage for the first time Wagner’s entire masterpiece The Ring Cycle—15 hours of music in four instalments—in the Royal Concert Hall from Monday 6 until Saturday 11 June.
Dance highlights include “the ground-breaking festival of hip hop dance theatre” Breakin’ Convention in the Royal Concert Hall on Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 May and Gary Clarke’s “riveting dance theatre show which takes a nostalgic look at the hard-hitting realities of life at the coal face”, Coal, at Nottingham Playhouse on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 May.
The full programme is available at the neat 16 web site.