Royal Court Theatre announces new shows and Dana H. transfer from Broadway

The Royal Court Theatre has announced new shows for the year ahead including a Broadway transfer of Dana H.

The venue has revealed for new works to be presented from April – August 2023 ahead, starting with No I.D. by Tatenda Shamiso (18 April – 6 May, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs), telling the story of his experience as a Black transgender immigrant in the UK.

Next up is Hope has a Happy Meal by Tom Fowler (3 June – 8 July, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs), a frenetic quest through a hyper-capitalist country while in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Olivier and BAFTA Award-winning playwright Michael Wynne returns to the Royal Court with Cuckoo (6 July – Saturday 19 August). In partnership with Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse, this new dark comedy will be directed by Royal Court Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone.

Rounding off the new works is Word-Play by Rabiah Hussain (20 July – 26 August, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs), exploring how language seeps into public consciousness.

In January 2024, the UK premiere of the Tony Award-winning Dana H. by Lucas Hnath will play at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from Tuesday 16 January – Saturday 9 March 2024. Directed by Les Waters, the transfer will see Deirdre O’Connell 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.

Meanwhile, the Royal Court has also announced a new online archive described as “a playground for all theatre geeks, audiences, students, educators and lovers of new writing”. The Living Archive will hold information on over 1600 plays put on on Royal Court stages from 1956 to the present day.

Plus, the venue has unveiled Machloket – a disagreement for a greater good, a storytelling project created with Jewish community groups across the UK. Working in partnership with Tash Hyman, Nick Cassenbaum and Take Stock Exchange, the project will create a nationwide conversation exploring what it means to be Jewish in the UK today.

Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, 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.”

For more information and tickets, visit royalcourttheatre.com