Happy New Year and welcome to the January edition of Ensemble. I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday and managed to spend some quality time with friends and family.

Looking ahead to this year we will be presenting a slate of fantastic productions and are particularly excited about our growing partnership with The National Theatre. The King and I recommences its acclaimed UK and international tour following a Christmas residency in Birmingham whilst The Rocky Horror Show continues to play in South Africa until March with more international dates planned for the year ahead. We’re also looking forward to progressing our new partnership with Jonathan Church and his team which will offer exciting prospects helping to strengthen our production capacity and audience reach.

Having already opened earlier this month in Australia to great reviews and acclaim, our co-production of War Horse with The National Theatre, which will then move on to Singapore, Manila and Korea. The cast of War Horse have been rallying behind the emergency WWF fundraising effort to help raise awareness and much-needed charity contributions for the one billion animals that have now been killed by the catastrophic fires ravaging Australia. Money raised will help the WWF Australian Wildlife and Nature Recovery Fund to deliver wildlife response and habitat restoration for both people and animals.

At Trafalgar Studios A Taste of Honey continues to play in Studio 1 until the end of February, followed by a transfer of award-winning Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s On Blueberry Hill starring Niall Buggy and David Ganly in March. The Chiswick Cinema will open in late 2020 and we will continue to scope out potential acquisitions in the UK and make further progress in developing our Asia-Pacific network.

Don’t forget that we’d love to hear about any examples of our key core company values – Creativity, Collaboration, Excellence, Respect – in practice. If you have a story to share with colleagues across the Group, please email Dave at [email protected]

Best wishes
Rosemary