David Harrower's CIARA, WRITE HERE Play Festival & More Set for Traverse Theatre's Autumn 2013 Season

The Traverse announces its Autumn season today, presenting a canon of world-class theatre to bring its 50th anniversary year to a close. The theatre welcomes back David Harrower's multi-award-winning 2013 Festival hit play, Ciara, directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O'Loughlin. The new writing festival Write Here will showcase the work of the Traverse Fifty, who have been on attachment this year.

This December sees the return of the jewel of this year's Traverse Festival crown, Ciara. This captivating play, written by one of Scotland's finest writers for the truly exceptional Blythe Duff, captured the imaginations of audiences and won Scotsman Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards this August. It offers an insight into the exhilarating world of a gallery owner and daughter of one of Glasgow's notorious crime bosses (3-21 Dec).

The Traverse looks to the future of new writing in October, as work from the writers found through last year's search for playwriting talent takes centre stage. The second annual writing festival Write Here will feature lunchtime plays and triple bill performances of work the Traverse Fifty have been developing during their attachment. Their work will extend beyond the theatre spaces, with free Headset Plays and Hidden Plays in various locations around the building all featuring their work. The Festival will also feature rehearsed readings of plays by Morna Pearson, Stef Smith and Iain Finlay Macleod (21-26 Oct).

The Autumn season starts with new work from Directing and Acting students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's MA Classical and Contemporary Text programme, featuring specially commissioned plays from Rob Drummond, Catherine Grosvenor and David Ireland (12-14 Sep). A rehearsed reading of Peter Arnott's Et In Arcadia (Group Portrait in Landscape) will be presented as a culmination to his year-long residency with the ESRC Genomics Forum (19 Sep).

Rapture Theatre present a revival of Mike Cullen's The Collection, embarking on a journey into the seedy world of debt collection with a dose of pitch black humour (20-21 Sep). Dogstar's The Baroness - Karen Blixen's Final Affair by Thor Bjorn Krebs and starring Roberta Taylor joins us after premiering to huge acclaim in Denmark (27-28 Sep).

2012 Fringe First-winning Educating Ronnie from macrobert and Utter tells the heart-warming true story of Joe Douglas's life changing trip to Uganda (2-5 Aug). Real-life experiences of disabled people form the basis of The Arches' and Robert Softley's If These Spasms Could Speak, fresh from its highly acclaimed Fringe run (11-12 Oct).

Traditional storytelling and atmospheric Hebridean music infuse Stoirm Òg's The Idiot at the Wall (3 Oct), and slapstick masters Spymonkey subvert the ultimate Greek classic in the anarchic comedy Oedipussy (9-12 Oct).

Stellar Quines Rehearsal Room returns in collaboration with Visible Fictions to present a rehearsed reading of The Sound of Cracking Bones by Suzanne Lebeau, about a child soldier breaking the vicious cycle of destructiveness into which they are thrown (9 Oct). Couldn't Care Lessfrom Strange Theatre and Plutôt La Vie draws on the experiences of carers to paint a surreal and touching portrait of a woman with Alzheimer's Disease (17-19 Oct).

The Traverse Dance Festival celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. The programme includes the return of Plan B with a meditation on nature More Sky Than We Need (5 Nov) and fifty mini piano and dance solos from Karl Jay Lewin and Matteo Fargion in Extremely Bad Dancing to Extremely French Music (7 Nov). Joss Arnott Dance bring the slickly choreographed double bill Record of Events and Threshold (6 Nov), and Anna Krzystek presents No End, on the premise of waiting (8 Nov). Finally, David Hughes Dance present Something Old, Something New..., an evening of dance delights featuring work from four world-class choreographers (9 Nov).

Theatre Ad Infinitum bring Translunar Paradise, a beautifully low-fi meditation on life, death and enduring love that won audiences' hearts and critics' awards during its 2011 and 2012 Fringe runs (18-19 Oct). Vox Motus's new show for all ages, Dragon is a collaboration with National Theatre of Scotland and Tianjin People's Arts Theatre and tells its story through puppetry and illusion (30 Oct-2 Nov). For younger audiences, macrobert and Fish and Game bring The Polar Bears Go Wild, a Christmas show for the under-fives, to Traverse 2 (5-21 Dec).

Chris Goode and Unicorn Theatre's Monkey Bars returns to the Traverse after a sell-out 2012 Festival run, a verbatim theatre piece that sees a script from 8-10 year-olds spoken by adult actors to hilarious and moving effect (31 Oct-2 Nov). Fresh from this year's Festival is Tortoise in a Nutshell and Cumbernauld Theatre's Feral, a fusion of puppetry, film and live sound (15-16 Nov).

Out of Joint, Bush Theatre and Exeter Northcott Theatre presents the Scottish Premiere of Dawn King's provocative new thriller Ciphers, that sees secrets unearthed after the death of a female intelligence officer (12-16 Nov). Stella, from Take The Space, contemplates two women astrologers at different places in history finding their places in the world (19-20 Nov).

Contemporary classical music evening Noisy Nights from Red Note Ensemble is back at the Traverse Bar Café (30 Sep & 9 Dec) and the Traverse's own playwriting work-in-progress evening Words, Words, Words returns in the theatre's studio space, Traverse 2 (22 Nov).

Booking for all shows on www.traverse.co.uk or 0131 228 1404.

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