EDWIN Morgan’s Scots version of Cyrano de Bergerac is to come back to the nation’s stages 25 years after it first premiered.
The translation of the Edmond Rostand classic by the late Glasgow poet laureate is at the heart of the National Theatre of Scotland’s programme for next year.
Jackie Wylie, the new Artistic Director said she was looking forward to presenting Morgan’s take on the tale of the heatrbroken poet with the big hooter.
The play was originally staged by Communicado Theatre in Inverness in 1992, directed by Scots theatre veteran Gerry Mulgrew.
National Theatre of Scotland's ambitious twelfth season also includes The Reason I Jump, a new play about living with autism, written by and starring people who have the condition.
The words come from novelist David Mitchell and Keiko Yoshida who have adapted a book by Naoki Higoshida, who himself is autistic and wrote the novel when he was thirteen years old.
It will be performed by a group of artists with autism ranging from 16 to 60 years old in the a park in Glasgow’s West End.
Also on the schedule, is the 306: Dusk by Oliver Emanuel, is the final part of the World War One trilogy, Nous/Us, about “sovereignty and identity” in a Quebecois and Scottish collaboration, a bi-lingual show which will be staged at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, written by Davey Anderson, Linda McLean and Philippe Ducros and directed by Patrice Dubois, My Left Right Foot, created by Robert Softley Gale, will also be shown at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018, and is described as a “riotous and irreverent new musical about disability.
While that's on the Company will take to the Edinburgh International Festival for 2018, with a restaging of Midsummer by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre.
Wylie also announced that Stewart Laing and Cora Bissett have been appointed as Associate Artists and Mark Stevenson will be the company’s first “Futurist in Residence”.
The NTS will be holding a mini festival called Futureproof next Autumn, with a series of performances with young people alongside established theatre figures.
Dundee will be the venue for Citizen of Nowhere, a mini festival “ commissions and discussions and questioning how theatre and art can respond to an increasingly fragmented world.”
Shift will be directed by Simon Sharkey at Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life, and will be a “multi media, site responsive theatre event exploring working lives in North Lanarkshire.”
Eddie and The Slumber Sisters, directed by Gill Roberston with text by Anita Vettesse, touring Scotland. A moving and musical immersive family show about grandparents and grieving. A Catherine Wheels and National Theatre of Scotland co-production.
Wylie said: “I am delighted to present the National Theatre of Scotland’s 2018 programme, with ambitious major productions, new plays, festival offerings, international interventions, regular tours of much loved productions and brand new shows.
“This is a wide-reaching, year-long nationwide programme that builds on the National Theatre of Scotland’s founding principle to be a theatre for everyone with a renewed focus for 2018 on celebrating young people and their vital contribution to our nation’s artistic life.
“We want to thrill and entertain audiences in Scotland and beyond, to encourage participation in cultural life and look to the future of what theatre can be.
“At the core of our 2018 season is a celebration of the brilliance of Scottish work. We also welcome artists from beyond our borders who we know will excite Scottish audiences and inspire our local artists.
“I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Stewart Laing and Cora Bissett as our new Associate Artists and Mark Stevenson who comes on board as our first Futurist in Residence. Nic Green and Adura Onashile will also join the National Theatre of Scotland as Artists in Residence. We also have an exciting new youth project team in place, whose members are already inspiring the Company with their energy and ideas.
“Huge thanks are due to all the partners, companies and supporters without whom the scope and vision of this programme could not be realised.”
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