Productions
Time and Tide (Oct 2022)
Together with five theatres from across New Anglia, we will be working with Relish Theatre on an exciting, manageable and collaborative approach to regional touring which supports local place based stories and artists for our region.
Time and Tide is a comic drama about four residents of a Norfolk community struggling with change. The play is about proving that the lives of everyday people who work in a café can be just as heroic, profound, poignant, dignified and interesting as the lives of the kings, queens or middle class heroes we’re used to seeing on stage, and we hope the play speaks to anyone who has ever felt trapped somewhere, be that in a job, a place or in themselves.
Relish Theatre is a company whose inception can be traced to Norwich six years ago. In a co-production with Norwich Theatre, they want to work alongside smaller Norfolk and Suffolk venues to bring Time and Tide to the communities that inspired it. Together we want to focus on development of the production, and build a new model of touring, engaging with local artists, and working with audiences to broaden the regional cultural landscape.
Birds and the Bees (Apr 2022)
This new play, which follows the lives and loves of a set of characters in a rural part of East Anglia, is a lovely comedic story from Canadian writer Mark Crawford with additional material by Norfolk writer James McDermott. Running for two weeks at Playhouse from 19 – 30 April 2022 it will hopefully boost the presence of drama in our overall programme in a year dominated by rescheduled musicals at Theatre Royal.
On a strategic level, it sees us work in co-production for the very first time with our two peer venues in the East Anglia best known for producing drama – New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds. This is quite a landmark and a place-making project for the East of England. We also hope that, if its run in the East is successful, it could have a wider national commercial touring life and delivery financial return to the co-producers.
Nimmo Twins A Load of Old Squit (Jan 2022)
After 25 years presenting the comedic writing of Karl Minns through the Nimmo Twins, over recent years we have been pleased to support his forays as a solo performer including the critically acclaimed SORTABIOGRAPHY, exploring his mental health journey. In 2022 we will produce both Nimmo Twins shows for the first time.
In the first of their twenty-fifth anniversary shows, Norfolk’s legendary sketch duo The Nimmo Twins (Owen Evans and Karl Minns) return with a two hour ‘Best Of..’ featuring their favourite sketches, songs and monologues as well as a first peek at the new material for their brand new show in August.
Robin Good (Dec 2021)
Each year we create the Playhouse Christmas show to provide an alternative to the traditional pantomime for those bigger kids and those looking for something slightly different from the show that is so popular at the Theatre Royal.
Robin Good, a Politico-Panto is a new flavour of pantomime that we have created especially for our Norwich and Norfolk audiences. It is absolutely packed with local humour and witty satire as our hero tries to stop Norfolk becoming a playground for the super-rich. At the end of a year, we often look back and reflect on past events, and now is the perfect time to take a second to light-heartedly look back at some of the things that have been happening in our political world.
On Before (2020)
Our first ever touring production, starring dance legend Carlos Acosta. This poignant dance piece opened at Norwich Theatre Royal in July before touring to The Lowry in Salford, The Mayflower Theatre in Southampton and The Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.
On Before is a homage to Carlos Acosta’s late mother and the most personal work he has ever created. The production embodies Carlos’ astonishing dance vision and features collaborations with major UK and international dance makers, Russell Maliphant, Kim Brandstrup, Will Tuckett, Raul Reinoso, Yury Yanowsky, Miguel Altunaga as well as Carlos’ own choreography.
In a framework created by Carlos, On Before tells the story of a doomed relationship between a man and a woman, set to a diverse musical repertoire ranging from Handel to Cuban contemporary composer Omar Puente and culminating in a moving finale featuring a live choir performing ‘Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium’.
Palm to Palm (2019)
A collaborative piece of theatre with local refugee, student & academics and vulnerable young adults. Each of their stories was collated and developed into a new play, facilitated by professional theatre makers. Participants had little or no previous experience of theatre:
- Evolve (Mancroft Advice Project) a monthly group for 11-25-year-olds who are transgender, intersex, genderqueer and gender-questioning young people.
- New Routes which works at grassroots level in Norwich with refugees, asylum seekers and isolated migrants from over 40 countries speaking 25-plus different languages, and promotes cross-cultural integration and community awareness.
- University of East Anglia students and staff.
Working with practitioners from Norwich Theatre and the RSC, the groups began by exploring their own links with the themes within Romeo and Juliet and imagining a journey from somewhere very different and arriving in a provincial city, in a world filled with new colours, new freedoms, new loves – a melting pot of cultures and gender.
SiX (2018)
Norwich Theatre was delighted to be the original production partner on SiX, staging the highly acclaimed musical’s first professional performances at Norwich Playhouse in Summer 2018.