The Royal Court Theatre announces programme for April - August 2023
Photo credit: Chad Batka
The Royal Court Theatre has announced it will present four new works between April and August 2023 as well as the Tony Award-winning Broadway transfer of Dana H in 2024.
Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, Vicky Featherstone said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be announcing this varied and beautiful season of work. All the writers and projects are questioning in very different ways our need for community, a need to belong and be understood, a place which holds us. Added to that we are finally able to give the first opportunity in our amazing history at the Royal Court to create and open up a Living Archive, questioning what archive is and how it can help us think about the future. We hope that people will enjoy engaging with us in all these different ways, looking both into our past and being immersed in stories which are fiercely about the now.”
The newly announced productions will begin with No I.D. by Tatenda Shamiso, telling the story of his experience as a Black transgender immigrant in the UK, fresh from a run at the Vaults, in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 18 April - 6 May.
Hope has a Happy Meal by Tom Fowler, a frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country will run in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 3 June - 8 July.
In the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning playwright Michael Wynne returns to the Royal Court with Cuckoo from 6 July - 19 August. In partnership with Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, this new dark comedy will be directed by Vicky Featherstone.
Word-Play by Rabiah Hussain will then play in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 20 July - 26 August, exploring how language seeps into public consciousness.
Looking into next year, the UK premiere of the Tony Award-winning Dana H. by Lucas Hnath will play at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from 16 January - 9 March 2024. Deirdre O'Connell will reprise her award-winning tour-de-force performance as Dana, a psych ward chaplain who was held captive by a patient in a series of Florida motels for five months. Dana Higginbotham’s remarkable true story is told in her own words and using her own voice, with recorded interviews reconstructed for the stage by Dana’s son, playwright Lucas Hnath, and meticulously lip-synced by O’Connell.
Directed by Les Waters, Dana H. was first presented at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2020, where it received three Obie citations, two Lortel Awards and the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Unique Theatrical Experience. Transferring to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, it received three Tony Award nominations, winning Best Actress in a Play (Deirdre O’Connell) and Best Sound Design (Mikhail Fiksel).
Tickets for all newly announced productions are on sale to supporters now, then to Friends at 12pm on 22 March, and to the general public at 12pm on 24 March here.