NEW NORDICS FESTIVAL Celebrating Nordic Theatre Has Launched In London

Fast rising theatre company Cut the Cord has announced the launch of their brand-new initiative designed to shine a light on Nordic plays and to spread awareness of modern Nordic theatre and its approaches with a new UK Festival.

The New Nordics Festival will take the form of a four-day festival celebrating Nordic theatre and will take place at East London's Yard Theatre from 18th - 21st March 2020.

Working with a mixture of upcoming and high profile theatre writers in the Nordic region (including Lisa Langseth who currently writes and directs for Netflix; and Vivian Nielsen who has received a Reumert Prize for her work), the festival hopes to display the collaborative work between Nordic and UK based creatives - with the aim of showcasing the strengths of Nordic writing which is, at its heart, steeped in Nordic values; most notably gender equality, environmental awareness, social engagement and other socially and politically progressive ways of thinking.

Through a rigorous selection process, six playwrights from six different Nordic countries - Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands - have been selected to bring their work to the festival and have been paired with six UK based directors to further support the inter-country relationship. The directors will also travel to their paired country to meet the writer, other directors, artistic directors and producers, and to explore what Nordic theatre and culture is, before returning to the UK to workshop and rehearse the pieces that will then be performed for one-night only at the festival, for the first time in the UK.

The festival is full of funny, dark and explosive plays, each giving a glimpse of the countries they come from including shows about climate change, fir trees, garages, loneliness, cows, and of course... IKEA.

The programme at a quick glance is as follows

• Refuge (Iceland) - writer: Matthías Tryggvi Haraldsson, director: Jack Nurse
• The Woman Who Turned into A Tree (Sweden) - writer: Lisa Langseth, director: Anna Himali Howard
• Searching for Being (Faroe Islands) - writer: Katarina G. Nolsøe, director: Janisè Sadik
• Garage (Finland) - writer: Mika Myllyaho, director: Lucie Dawkins
• No Planet B (Denmark) - writer: Vivian Nielsen, director: Roberta Zuric
• Counting to Zero (Norway) - writer: Kristofer Grønskag, director: Eleanor Chadwick

The programme was announced on Tuesday 14th January at a celebratory launch event held at central London's h club where the playwright/director pairings were announced alongside the selected plays, as guests were treated to an opening speech by Danish Ambassador Lars Thuesen and music by celebrated Swedish singer Emilia Martensson. Also in attendance at the launch, were the ambassadors from each of the six participating countries.

Festival Director, Camilla Gürtler says, "It takes a lot to start a new festival, especially one that moves across borders and engages the work of artists of many nationalities, but we've had great support from Nordic embassies and other partners. The festival was born out of a wish to bridge the gap between theatre cultures in different countries, between the UK and the Nordic region, showcasing the best each has to offer. The festival is about skills-exchange and growing an international network and link between UK and Nordic artists with the hope that these relationships will continue to flourish in years to come, and we're so excited to welcome our Nordic writers to London this March."

For full details on each show and tickets, visit: https://theyardtheatre.co.uk/theatre/events/new-nordics-festival-2020/

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