Donmar Warehouse for The Trials

Dawn King’s play The Trials, which premiered at London’s Donmar Warehouse in August, was not your average production. While its timely and gripping focus on the climate emergency felt very much of the moment, it was its path to the stage that set it apart.

The play, directed by Natalie Abrahami and set in an imagined near future, revolves around 12 young jurors, played by teenagers, and a group of adult defendants being tried for the impact their lifestyles have had on the climate crisis. To cast the jurors, the Donmar cast its net over schools and community groups across London, meeting 1,400 young people as part of the audition – which doubled as a performance workshop and a chance to learn about climate change activism – after which 200 took part in a devising programme. The final 12 were made up of teenagers from the engagement programme and young actors such as Heartstopper stars Joe Locke and William Gao.

In keeping with its themes, The Trials was created with support from arts sustainability charity Julie’s Bicycle, it used a tracking system to ensure sets and props included recycled materials that could have a future life and worked with a ‘climate dramaturg’. On top of all this, the show itself was thrilling.

The Trials was the first production from the Donmar LOCAL project to be presented as a full main-stage show. It was an inventive example of how engagement can be embedded into core programming, making it somewhat dispiriting to be recognising this excellent work in a year in which the Donmar’s Arts Council England subsidy was removed. But, the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury will stage its version of The Trials next year, in partnership with the Donmar.

New Diorama Theatre for Intervention 01

London’s New Diorama is no stranger to thinking outside the box when it comes to artist development and has long prided itself in its distinctive approach to supporting independent artists. Last year, it fashioned a 20,000 sq ft rehearsal complex out of a meanwhile-use development in the middle of London and gave space to companies for free. Yet its latest move felt as surprising as it was risky. In August, it announced no shows would take place on its stage for the rest of the year. Its social media would go dark until 2023. It would disappear – to the public, at least. Behind closed doors, however, it vowed to be busier than ever. Freed from the pressures of programming its theatre, it channelled its energy – and an investment of more than £250,000 – into reimagining its output and investing in “the risks everyone claims they want to take but rarely do”.

Intervention 01 was a deliberate attempt to disrupt the status quo, to “get off the treadmill and begin work on a bold new slate of ideas”. The theatre attempted to break the trend of short-term programming that it said has led to burnout for artists and has stifled creative risk. Artistic director David Byrne said the initiative represented “the most radical thing we can imagine”, and at a time when the need for venues to get bums on seats felt more acute than ever, the New Diorama’s decision to stop did feel profound. 

It was without doubt a bold move, and perhaps one that only a theatre in New Diorama’s position could take, but regardless of whether Intervention 01 will yield the game-changing effects it promises, it showed fresh, uncompromising thinking and a willingness to leap into the unknown.

Sam Crane/Rustic Mascara for Hamlet

What would happen if you tried to perform a Shakespeare play in an open-world video game? It is not a question many have asked, but, luckily for us, actor Sam Crane did. Crane – who is currently in the West End’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – began playing Grand Theft Auto in lockdown, and began to wonder if he could pull off a theatre performance inside its sprawling world.

As the digital avatar Rustic Mascara, Crane staged a full production of Hamlet inside GTA, featuring, alongside himself as the Danish prince, actors he had auditioned in the game. Rehearsals also took place inside GTA, but the cast was often shot at or blown up by other players. The final production, at two hours and 53 minutes, was streamed on gaming platform Twitch and can be seen on YouTube. It was audacious in its theatricality and surprising, entertaining and moving. 

Unlike other digital theatre, such as filmed or streamed shows, audiences and performers existed in the same space, albeit digitally, and had real-time interactions, like a live theatre experience. More than 5,000 people watched the production on YouTube, and it is exciting to think there may be a vast, global and as-yet-untapped audience for performance in the realm of video games. 

While theatre is beginning to embrace technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, projects are few and far between, relatively niche and prohibitively expensive for anyone without big investment. Crane has proved this doesn’t need to be the case with an ingenious take on a classic.

To see all the other nominations for The Stage Awards click the category below:

Theatre of the Year

Fringe Theatre of the Year

Theatre Building of the Year 

Producer of the Year

Innovation Award

Digital Project of the Year

Community Project of the Year 

International Award