At a press conference this morning, Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham announced that the Tricycle Theatre will relaunch as the Kiln Theatre, with an exciting new season commencing September.
The new season includes five world premières, one UK première – a new Florian Zeller play directed by Michael Longhurst – and a major musical revival – starring Sharon D. Clarke and Clive Rowe – as well as plans to launch the venue’s first major community play next year.
Explaining the rationale behind the name change, Rubasingham said today, “We are hugely proud of our heritage, and the part we play in the community here in Kilburn – Kiln Theatre embraces that spirit, and everything that has come before in our history has brought us to this point, building a theatre and programme for the future.
“We are proud to announce the next stage of the journey as we re-open later this year with a new auditorium and audience experience, an expanded creative learning programme, and a season of new work that takes us on journeys through time and cultures from our doorstep of Kilburn High Road to around the world and back.”
The new Kiln Theatre artwork
“This is the next stage of the journey…” as the line-up for the new season is unveiled! pic.twitter.com/4sKzpbrxoN
— Official London Theatre | TKTS (@london_theatre) April 11, 2018
The newly refurbished Kiln Theatre’s season reopens in September with two shows directed by Rubasingham herself: the world première of Holy Sh!t (5 September – 6 October) by Alexis Zegerman, which sees ambitious parents wrestle for places in a local Church of England school; and Stephen Sharkey’s adaptation of Zadie Smith’s seminal work White Teeth (26 October – 22 December) – a musical re-telling of a sprawling epic set amidst the different cultures, stories and everyday encounters on Kilburn High Road.
Ishy Din’s Approaching Empty subsequently opens 9 January 2019, playing until 2 February, and directed by Pooja Ghai. A former taxi driver himself, Din’s latest work looks at different generations of taxi drivers in the North East of England, laying bare the everyday struggles of a post-industrial generation of South Asian British men.
Continuing the company’s association with Florian Zeller after their recent hits The Father and The Mother, Michael Longhurst directs the UK première of The Son (20 February – 13 April 2019), in a translation by Christopher Hampton, centring on the effects of a family breakdown on their son. Samuel Adamson’s Wife (5 June – 13 July) follows – mapping a constellation of four queer stories within four generations in one family – directed by Rubasingham.
At the culmination of the opening season are the first major London revival of Blues In The Night (22 July – 7 September 2019) in 30 years, in which Susie McKenna directs Sharon D. Clarke and Clive Rowe in a scorching compilation of 26 blues numbers that frame the lives of four residents of a downtown hotel; and Anupama Chandrasekhar’s new play When The Crows Visit (9 October – 16 November), a modern transposition of the themes of Ibsen’s Ghosts into modern-day India.
Also announced today, Kiln Theatre, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), is launching A Friendly Society – a programme aimed to open up the theatre, its history and the local history of Brent to both its existing audiences and the wider community, with a view to collating research into a community play at the theatre in summer 2019.
Tickets for Holy Sh!t, White Teeth and Approaching Empty are now on sale through the new Kiln Theatre website; the rest of the 2019 season will go on sale in September 2018.