The Royal Court's new artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, has thrown open the doors of the theatre for a six week festival of events suggested by writers which will run across June and July.
The extensive programme for Open Court includes six plays in weekly rep with its own 14–actor company, playwrights reading their own work in a secret location at the Theatre, and in Peckham a five-minute, nightly soap opera filmed in front of a live audience.
One of three Big Ideas is Kids Court, a week–long programme of events curated by playwrights aged between eight and eleven. The other two Ideas are three Friday nights each exploring one of sex, age and death, and PIIGS, an initiative involving international and UK playwrights looking at austerity in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
Away from the Sloane Square venue, the Theatre Local programme sees Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker play the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston from 5 July and the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart by David Greig play the London Welsh Centre from 12 July and then the Bussey Building in Peckham from 5 August.
In making the announcement, Vicky Featherstone said, “with the summer a blank canvas before my first season of plays at the Royal Court starts, I turned to the only people who could possibly answer the question of what to do with it, how to fill it. The writers. It is because of them, after all, that we exist.
“I was going to give them the keys of the Royal Court for six weeks in the summer. What did they want to do with them?
“What ensued has been a testament to the creativity, the anarchy, the playfulness, the restless questioning of who we are and the desire to surprise and thrill an audience, of our brilliant writers."
In the same statement, the appointment of Carrie Cracknell and John Tiffany as Associate Directors has also been announced. They join Associate Simon Godwin. Lucy Davies joins imminently as Executive Director as previously reported.
Vicky Featherstone’s first full season of plays will be announced in June for a September opening.
Open Court runs from 10 June to 20 July. Tickets go on sale to the public on the afternoon of 23 April. For further information and booking visit www.royalcourttheatre.com