Five years after the Print Room relocated to the former Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill Gate, the building is reclaiming its original name, the Coronet Theatre. Its first season – featuring a varied mix of theatre, dance, film, visual art and installations – is now announced.
Artistic director Anda Winters announced the Coronet Theatre’s first season of UK and international performance and visual art, which includes five UK and world premieres, with work by Christopher Hampton, Thomas Lebrun, Bruce McLean, Simon Armitage, Bongsu Park, Alix Sobler and Caroline Wright.
At the Coronet Theatre, the studio, where events will be presented in tandem with those on the main stage, will retain the name The Print Room in recognition of the company’s first home, in a converted 1950s warehouse-turned-graphic design workshop nearby in Westbourne Grove.
Anda Winters commented:
“This wonderful building started life in 1898 as the Coronet Theatre, where Edward VII often visited, Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt performed, and where John Gielgud saw his first Shakespeare play. In 1923, it became the much-loved Coronet Cinema, but was increasingly neglected until we moved here in 2014.
“As it is gradually restored, our aim is to use the whole building for multi-disciplinary programming, spanning theatre, dance, film, visual art and installations. The programme for the next six months will make the most of our ability to stage integrated work in different art forms simultaneously in the Coronet Theatre and the Print Room, with artists presenting their work in both spaces.
“With our combination of grand architecture, and intimate and warm settings, we offer a warm welcome to our audiences, and to outstanding artists from across the globe – and of course to what has been described as the most beautiful theatre bar in London!”
The season in the main house commences with the current world premiere production of Alix Sobler’s The Glass Piano, directed by Max Key, which runs until 25 May 2019, including a post-show Q&A chaired by Mates co-founder Terri Paddock on Wednesday 8 May.
Join Terri, director Max Key & the cast on 8 May 2019
A ‘season within a season’, running from 29 May to 22 June 2019, features artists working in both spaces, using different art forms to present their work:
- Caroline Wright’s integrated work The Breath Control Project, (29 May-1 June), captures the melody and rhythm of breathing, and comprises Notes, an interactive installation in The Coronet Theatre, and Osmosis, a choral performance in The Print Room.
- The world premiere of Bruce McLean’s film The Decorative Potential of Blazing Factories – A Catastrophe in Cardboard (19-22 June), is commissioned by The Coronet Theatre for the Coronet stage. Simultaneously there will be an exhibition of McLean’s working drawings and recent models for the film in The Print Room.
- The world premiere of Dream Ritual by Korean artist Bongsu Park and contemporary dancer Jinyeob Cha (3-6 July). Ethereal dance and video performance is inspired by the Korean tradition of buying and selling dreams, whilst alongside the performance a selection of Bongsu Park’s video works will be exhibited in The Print Room.
Further ahead, the UK premiere of Youth Without God (19 September–19 October) by Oscar-winning dramatist Christopher Hampton is an only too pertinent evocation of life under fascism, helmed by Austrian director Stephanie Mohr. Based on the last novel by Ödön von Horváth, it was written in exile while in flight from the Nazis.
In the UK premiere of Another Look At Memory (24-26 October), celebrated French choreographer Thomas Lebrun travels through ten years of choreography with three of his most faithful dancers. Together they respond to Philip Glass’s powerful choral score. Part of Institut Francais’ festival, France Dance.
Poetry is a hugely successful programming strand in both The Coronet Theatre and The Print Room. It continues with Poetry Club’s intimate events, including evenings with Simon Armitage and rising stars Mona Arshi and Fiona Benson. The Dead Poets Live series returns on 29 September, with the works of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne More, who met and became close friends in New York in 1934.
The Coronet Theatre hosts several theatre and literature festivals. This summer the Italian Theatre Festival returns after selling out in 2018 over the weekend of 7-8 June.
Inside the Coronet Theatre
Photography by Luke Knight and David Jensen.
Theatrical highlights
The Breath Control Project
29 May-1 June 2019
A new installation & performance from Caroline Wright
Breathe in… and out… don’t stop. Caroline Wright brings a new installation and a performance that captures the melody and rhythm of breathing: the sustaining inhalations and exhalations that punctuate our daily lives.
Notes is a breath-taking interactive experience for one person at a time. In Osmosis, join Caroline, acclaimed mezzo-soprano Laura Wright, and members of the local community in the London ‘Breath Choir’ for a unique live performance to celebrate our relationship with our own breath: as gift, as voice, as life
Italian Theatre Festival
7-8 June 2019
After a sell-out success in 2018, the Italian Theatre Festival returns to The Coronet Theatre to celebrate some of Italy’s most distinguished writers and performers. Fabrizio Gifuni pays tribute to Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark in Remember Me: Homage to Hamlet, while Marco Paolini expands on his study of the character of Ulysses in Odysseus Filò.
Three classic Italian short stories by Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante and Fabrizia Ramondino are staged by Greta Scacchi, Alessandra Vanzi and Lucy Russell. Finally, Giuseppe Battiston presents his one-man show Winston vs Churchill by Carlo G Gabardini, a portrait of the man and the politician.
Youth Without Good
19 September-19 October 2019
Written by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Stephanie Mohr
Written in exile while in flight from the Nazis, Youth Without God is the last novel by Ödön von Horváth, one of the 20th century’s great writers. A bracing evocation of life under fascism is brought to the stage by Oscar-winning dramatist Christopher Hampton (A German Life, Dangerous Liaisons, Atonement).
When a teacher reprimands a student for a racist comment, he stands accused of ‘sabotage of the Fatherland’. His students revolt, and a murder follows. The teacher must face his role in it, even if it costs him everything. Portraying a world of individual ruthlessness and collective numbness, it’s a story as relevant today as ever before.
