National Theatre

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Textual Production Margaret Atwood
In late November, with perceived parallels to current events keeping The Handmaid's Tale riding high, Atwood announced that in September 2019 she would release a sequel: The Testaments, set in Gilead fifteen years after...
Literary responses Enid Bagnold
The Chalk Garden remains EB 's best-known work. While it has had frequent revivals by amateur and professional companies, Bagnold was disappointed that the National Theatre never expressed interest in reviving it, an omission she...
Reception Agatha Christie
Daily Telegraph referred to this play as the cleverest murder mystery of the British theatre, while the Observer identified it as a classic.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
13
In June 1999 the set used in the original production...
Performance of text Caryl Churchill
CC 's A Dream Play, translated from a play by Strindberg dating from 1901, was published, close to its opening night at the National Theatre in London.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Performance of text Caryl Churchill
CC 's short play Here We Go, a striking memento mori for an age without faith, opened at the National Theatre ; it was published nexg day.
Billington, Michael. “Here We Go review’Caryl Churchill’s chilling reminder of our mortality”. theguardian.com.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Performance of text Caryl Churchill
Its London run at the Royal Court Theatre began three weeks later.
Demastes, William W., editor. British Playwrights, 1956-1995. Greenwood Press.
109
A revival which opened at the National Theatre in April 2015 was timed to coincide with the British general election.
Literary responses Caryl Churchill
Top Girls achieved tremendous popular and critical success. In 1999, National Theatre audiences voted it one of the top One Hundred Plays of the Century—and the only play by a woman to make the top...
Intertextuality and Influence Caryl Churchill
The 1986 deregulation of the stock market—the Big Bang—by fortunate coincidence
Churchill, Caryl. Serious Money. Methuen.
prelims
took place during the play's workshop and development period. The play centres on a corporate takeover, which functions allegorically: a corporate raider...
Performance of text Caryl Churchill
CC 's ecological drama, The Skriker, was produced at the National Theatre (now officially, since 1988, the Royal National Theatre ). This was only its second staging of a play by a living British...
Performance of text Sarah Daniels
The National Theatre produced SD 's feminist play Neaptide on its Cottesloe stage. Printed the same year, the play is about lesbians living with prejudice and concealment.
Griffin, Gabriele. “Violence, Abuse, and Gender Relations in the Plays of Sarah Daniels”. The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights, edited by Elaine Aston and Janelle Reinelt, Cambridge University Press, pp. 194-11.
207
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Daniels, Sarah. Plays: One. Methuen.
234
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Reception Sarah Daniels
Masterpieces brought SD two awards for most promising playwright: one from Drama and another from Plays and Players: the London Theatre Critics Award, which she shared. Audiences at the National Theatre later voted this...
Reception Sarah Daniels
This was the first play by a living woman ever to be given at the National Theatre .
Yousaf, Nahem et al., editors. “Introduction”. Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker, University of South Carolina Press, p. vii - xxiii.
xv
Its first draft won the George Devine Award.
Remnant, Mary, editor. “Introduction”. Plays by Women: Volume 6, Methuen, pp. 7-12.
9
Robert Hewison in the Sunday Times...
Performance of text Sarah Daniels
The plays, written for young actors, had all been workshopped at a residential weekend for members of various theatre companies somewhere in the Midlands (the workshop on Taking Breath being led by director Gemma Bodinetz
Performance of text Sarah Daniels
In summer 2005 SD contributed another play to a National Theatre Connections season for young people: Dust, which takes up the topic of bullying.
Aston, Elaine, and Geraldine Harris. Performance Practice and Process: Contemporary (Women) Practitioners. Palgrave Macmillan.
84
Reception Shelagh Delaney
SD won several awards for the play. In England, she received the Charles Henry Foyle New Play Award in 1958 and an Arts Council Bursary Award in 1959. She also received the New York Drama...

Timeline

19 May 1908: A campaign to establish a National Theatre...

Building item

19 May 1908

A campaign to establish a National Theatre began with a mass meeting at the Lyceum Theatre , London.

9 March 1949: A National Theatre Act was passed by the...

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9 March 1949

A National Theatre Act was passed by the British Parliament , which allowed the Treasury to contribute towards national theatre costs.

13 July 1951: Queen Elizabeth II laid the foundation stone...

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13 July 1951

Queen Elizabeth II laid the foundation stone of the National Theatre , on the South Bank, London.

11 April 1967: Tom Stoppard's first great stage success,...

Writing climate item

11 April 1967

Tom Stoppard 's first great stage success, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, had its professional debut at the National Theatre in London. A version had been seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of...

25 October 1976: The National Theatre's new home on the South...

Building item

25 October 1976

The National Theatre 's new home on the South Bank officially opened with a royal gala performance of a comedy by Carlo Goldoni in its larger auditorium, the Olivier.

13 April 1993: Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, a play whose action...

Writing climate item

13 April 1993

Tom Stoppard 's Arcadia, a play whose action is divided between the early nineteenth century and the present day, opened (after previews) at the National Theatre in London.

September-November 2005: An exhibition at the National Theatre in...

Writing climate item

September-November 2005

An exhibition at the National Theatre in London, Flogging the Jewels, celebrated thirty years of the company now called Sphinx (formerly the Women's Theatre Group).

By 13 May 2007: The director of London's National Theatre,...

Women writers item

By 13 May 2007

The director of London's National Theatre , Nicholas Hytner , alleged that critics (whom he called dead white men) showed misogyny in reviewing plays by women.

Texts

NT2000: 100 Plays of the Century. National Theatre, 1999.
Program: Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby. National Theatre, 1994.