The 2020 season at Keswick’s Theatre By The Lake, the first under the leadership of new artistic director, Liz Stevenson includes five world premières, a commitment to new writing and new collaborations with the rural touring company Pentabus, as well as a three week run of Emma Rice and Wise Children’s lauded musical Malory Towers.
Community is at the heart of Stevenson’s first season, kicking off in March with the world première of One Side Lies the Sea, a co-production with Pentabus directed by their artistic director Sophie Motley. The show weaves a journey through the communities that inhabit the coastline.
The show will open at TBTL before embarking on a national rural tour which takes in Cumbrian village halls and community centres.
Malory Towers will open at Keswick before embarking on a national tour.
The theatre’s rep summer season will feature a company of eleven who will perform across six plays in two separate theatres. The Main House season opens with sixties classic Boeing Boeing. This is followed by a spine-chilling revival of Patrick Hamilton’s Rope, directed by Stevenson. This noir thriller was purported to be based on a real-life case.
Completing the line-up in the Main House will be a world première of The Climbers by Carmen Nasr. The play is an exploration of our fascination with mountains.
Launching the studio season is a world première production of Kieran Knowles’s play Wilt, set in a park ranger’s office.
This season of firsts continues with Holly Race Roughan directing a world première of These Walls by Laura Lomas. The story follows two women who share a prison cell, one of whom is expecting a child.
The Studio season concludes with another world première: Drown Your Empty Selves by Joseph Wilde. Jack is immortal. Every hundred years he staggers back to the same pub in the hope of seeing the only person in the world who might know him: Rose.
At the close of the year, families will be treated to a new production of The Borrowers by Mary Norton.