Laura Elliot and Corey Campbell, Coventry Belgrade’s new leadership team, have revealed further details of the theatre’s spring 2023 season which will include “high-quality” dramas co-produced with nationally and internationally renowned companies and theatres.
Creative director Campbell will devise and direct the first home-produced show of his tenure, Big Aunty, a “darkly comic family drama that’s alive with ideas and emotions that connect us all, offering a welcome opportunity to gather and reflect on challenging times, and how we can find a path to resolution”. It will run from Monday 24 April until Saturday 6 May.
The Belgrade will collaborate with Headlong and the Barbican in an experiment in sustainable theatre-making. Directed first at the Barbican by Katie Mitchell, the UK première of Miranda Rose Hall’s A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction will subsequently tour the UK without people or materials physically travelling.
All aspects of the stage performance will be powered by bicycles peddled in real time throughout the duration of the show. At the Belgrade, a team will stage and perform Hall’s “darkly funny and uplifting” play which explores what it means to be human in an era of man-made extinction. It can be seen at the Belgrade from Wednesday 10 until Saturday 13 May.
A new partnership between the Belgrade and Paines Plough will start in July. Campbell explains, “we’re really excited to announce the pre-Edinburgh Fringe See It First Festival which will see the Belgrade preview Paines Plough’s summer show and a further curated programme of work with local artists before it travels to Edinburgh.
“We’ve partnered with Paines Plough to offer a tech support package for the curated work as well as workshops and development opportunities for local audiences and artists alike. We want the Belgrade to be an artistic hub for the region and for Coventry to get some of the best Fringe programme in our B2 auditorium.”
Other work includes Mojisola Adebayo’s Family Tree, a co-production with the Actors Touring Company (10–18 March), Pilot Theatre’s new adaptation of Manjeet Mann’s novel Run, Rebel (21–25 March), co-produced by the Belgrade, Mercury Theatre Colchester, Derby Theatre and York Theatre Royal, and a new adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, co-produced with Leeds Playhouse (25–29 April).
The full programme is available at the Belgrade Theatre web site.