Through 2008, there will be three ensemble companies, playing 509 roles in 13 Shakespeare productions and five full scale new plays.

RSC announces 2008 Artistic Programme

The RSC remains in expansive mode after the Complete Works Festival. Through 2008, there will be three ensemble companies, playing 509 roles in 13 Shakespeare productions and five full scale new plays.

Highlights

• Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran directs David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius, cross-casting the Hamlet acting company with Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Tim Carroll directs The Merchant of Venice and Conall Morrison directs The Taming of the Shrew, sharing an ensemble cast
• 2008 is the first full year of new plays appearing in London under the umbrella of RSC new work. Five new plays by Anthony Neilson, Marina Carr, Leo Butler, Roy Williams and Adriano Shaplin
• Public Understudy Runs are back in the RSC schedule. They will be for The Merchant of Venice and Love's Labour's Lost

Michael Boyd, Artistic Director, said today:

"2008 will see the future shape of the RSC begin to emerge. The Histories Ensemble is proving that the imaginative power which grows among a group of actors working together for an extended period can be something special. These actors have confirmed my faith in the Ensemble principle, which is at the heart of my ambitions for the RSC. I'm delighted that we can follow the Complete Works Festival in such sure-footed fashion with our eight play History Cycle.

"In 2008 we will have three companies of actors all embracing the creative security which ensemble offers whilst taking risks with the courage it fosters. These companies will pursue deeper artistic enquiry into Shakespeare and sharpen their wits on the high-wire challenge of new work. It's one of our important strengths that we can allow actors the time and space to develop, learn and experiment.

"We want to give writers this same opportunity and 2008 signals a renewed commitment to contemporary dramatists. We are moving forward from short festivals of new work towards full runs of major new plays.

"In Stratford, the transformation of our theatres is well underway and still on course for completion in 2010. The Courtyard Theatre is now our main home until the RST and the Swan reopen. It's a great space for Shakespeare, and it's already much loved.

"I am confident that people will find this an exciting season. It celebrates and reaffirms the way in which we want to work, and the kind of spaces we want to work in."

The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Tim Carroll, in his RSC debut, opens the summer season at The Courtyard Theatre in April, directing an ensemble in The Merchant of Venice. Conall Morrison, who recently directed Macbeth in the Swan Theatre, will direct the same ensemble in The Taming of the Shrew.

RSC Chief Associate Director, Gregory Doran, will direct an ensemble of actors cross-cast in three Shakespeare plays; Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost and a revival of his highly-praised 2005 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in The

Courtyard Theatre:

Hamlet will see the return of David Tennant to the RSC in the title role. Now best known as the latest incarnation of Dr Who on TV, David has appeared at the RSC in two previous seasons; in 1996/7 in As You Like It (Touchstone), The General From America and The Herbal Bed, and then in 2000/1 in The Comedy of Errors, The Rivals and playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

Patrick Stewart returns to the company to play Claudius. His last RSC season was as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and Prospero in The Tempest as part of the Complete Works Festival. Since then, he has been at the Chichester Festival Theatre playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night and the title role in Macbeth, which is transferring to the West End this month.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will play in repertoire with The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice through the spring and early summer. Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost, with David Tennant in the role of Berowne, will then join the repertoire until November 2008 (see press night diary).

Previously popular with Stratford audiences, Public Understudy Runs will resume for The Merchant of Venice and Love's Labour's Lost.

The legacy of collaboration engendered by the Complete Works Festival continues inside and outside the RSC. Many of the productions seeded by the Festival are still being performed around the UK and internationally - for example, the RSC/Opera North sonnet project Nothing Like the Sun goes to Barcelona and Ghent and Sulayman Al-Bassam's Richard III - An Arab Tragedy to Amsterdam, Turin and Paris.

In a closer collaboration with the RSC, Filter's unique fusion of text and sound in their version of Twelfth Night (originally developed for the Festival and a big success in Edinburgh this year) will tour schools in Warwickshire and London in autumn 2008 as the RSC's Young People's Shakespeare project. Twelfth Night will return to The Courtyard Theatre in November for a special late-night performance in November.

The Courtyard will also host a Sunday music concert on 26th October of new commissions by young British composers, curated by RSC Head of Music, John Woolf.

London

The Merchant and Shrew ensemble will rehearse two new pieces of work which will premiere in London, completing our programme of five new plays in 2008:

• a four week run of The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, by award-winning American playwright and RSC/Warwick University CAPITAL International Writer in Residence, Adriano Shaplin, which stokes up the fevered debate on God and science
• a four week run of a coruscating new play about the personal cost of creativity, The Cordelia Dream, by Marina Carr, directed by Selina Cartmell, who are currently working together at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin

They will join other new work we have already announced:

• six weeks at The Tricycle Theatre with I'll Be The Devil by Leo Butler, directed by Ramin Gray, and Days of Significance by Roy Williams, directed by Maria Aberg. Both writers tell vivid and strikingly different stories about the corrupting influence of war on our everyday lives
• six weeks at Soho Theatre with a dark and wild new work for eleven actors by Anthony Neilson

Jeanie O'Hare, RSC Literary Manager, said:

"The RSC is fast becoming a haven for living dramatists. We initiate and nurture the work of writers who want to write epic plays, who are keen to re-establish the creative relationship between writer and actor, who want to devise new work, and spend time in the rehearsal room engaging with our classical productions. When we began we thought this would be a slow-burn project, but results are already emerging. Writers are desperate to flex their muscles and write for big stages.

"Our long-term ambition is to generate plays which can earn a place in our repertoire and also earn a decent living for the writer. Writers are actively encouraged to plunder Shakespearean dramaturgy and to take a leading role within the contemporary Royal Shakespeare Company."

Histories at the Roundhouse, London

Michael Boyd brings his Histories Ensemble to London to perform all 264 roles in the eight play History Cycle. The plays open at the Roundhouse in April 2008.

 Booking dates for Stratford season:

Full Members' postal booking opens 12 September 2007
Full Members' phone and web booking opens 19 September 2007
Associate Members' postal booking opens 24 September 2007
Associate Members' phone and web booking opens 10 October 2007
Public booking opens Monday 15 October 2007

Booking dates for RSC productions at the Roundhouse and Tricycle Theatres

New London and Soho theatre booking is already open

Full Members' postal booking opens 23 October 2007
Full Members' phone and web booking opens 30 October 2007
Associate Members' postal booking opens 1 November 2007
Associate Members' phone and web booking opens 12 November 2007
Public Booking opens Friday 16 November 2007

Links to box offices at the Roundhouse, Tricycle and Soho theatres for ticket booking will be available from www.rsc.org.uk/london

RSC Ticket Hotline: 0844 800 1110
RSC Membership information: 01789 403440