Nica Burns, Chief Executive of Nimax Theatres and former President of the Society of London Theatre, and Dominic Dromgoole have announced the formation of their new theatre company Classic Spring. Dominic was the Artistic Director for Shakespeare’s Globe from 2006 to 2016.
The company will be dedicated to celebrating classic playwrights and performing their works in the playhouses they wrote for. The company’s inaugural show will be Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, opening in October 2017 and directed by Dominic, at a Nimax theatre to be announced soon. The inaugural season will focus on his four great Victorian plays which also includes Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.
As part of Nimax’s ongoing commitment to introducing West End theatre to young people, they are partnering with Tall Stories (The Gruffalo, The Snail and the Whale) to create a children’s show for 4-8 year olds and their grown-ups entitled Wilde Creatures. The season will also include some “Wilde Cards” which will be interspersed amongst the plays and will be based on the essays and poems of Oscar Wilde.
The Wilde season will run for a year, and will then be followed by a similar exploration of the work George Bernard Shaw.
Nica Burns said: “I am delighted to announce a new collaboration with former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole. Together, we are creating a new company, named Classic Spring, dedicated to celebrating the work of some of our greatest proscenium playwrights in the architecture that they wrote for, and exploring how the change that they effected in their own day still resonates today.”
Dominic Dromgoole said: “It has always been my pleasure and privilege to support and promote the voices of writers, whether new writers at the Bush, the Old Vic or the Globe, or Shakespeare, the mainspring of our theatre culture. This is a wonderful chance to present the work of those writers who defined the proscenium century, and who still speak to us piercingly and profoundly today. Oscar Wilde, as exemplified in the stunning and provocative recent exhibition at Reading Gaol by Artangel, was one of the pioneering iconoclasts of the Victorian age, and these gorgeous witty plays are still shining examples of how to satirise the world you live in, and how to nudge it forwards. I look forward to presenting them across a year-long season in the West End.”