Welcome to your weekly newsletter from Curve. We hope you and your loved ones are well and all is good for those of you with young people returning to school.

There are only four days to go until our friends at Wise Children ‘visit’ Curve with their digital tour of Romantics Anonymous! Rehearsals are underway in Bristol and the company are enjoying every moment of being back in a theatre, rehearsing a show. We envy them and can’t wait until we can be back at work in LE1. We hope you’ve got your tickets ready, your pre-show meal in your dining room booked and your outfit – or should that be pyjamas! – prepared for this brilliant live broadcast from Bristol Old Vic. If you haven’t booked yet, there’s still time to do so – see the show section below for more details.

We’ve had a wonderful reaction to our latest Curve Commissioned Community Project, Somewhere Over the Rainbow; thank you so much for all of your kind words. It’s moving to see so many familiar faces in the video and the song takes on greater poignancy and resonance in these stark times. If you missed the video – which features a 60-strong digital choir of local singers, signers and musicians – in last week’s newsletter, we’ve re-included the link to watch it below. We are also pleased to confirm that tickets for our 2021 rescheduled dates for The Wizard of Oz are now available to book online. Though it’s a longer journey to Oz than we ever anticipated, we look forward to welcoming you to the Emerald City next year.

In other exciting news our Made at Curve shows have crossed the Atlantic, with our archive recordings making the online and print pages of The New York Times. Photographer Ellie Kurttz‘s stunning image of Johnny (Jonny Fines) and Omar (Omar Malik) in My Beautiful Laundrette also leads the ‘Theater to Stream‘ piece, helping us to make a truly big splash across the pond. The article details all of Curve’s online archive recordings and we’ve been pleased to receive emails from people across America, who have enjoyed engaging with Curve. Huge congratulations to our Press & Digital Manager Fiona Moore for securing this terrific coverage for our theatre and Leicester.

We conclude this week with two fantastic opportunities for emerging artists: Graeae‘s Beyond is designed to support d/Deaf, hard-of-hearing and Disabled artists, and successful applicants will benefit from a share in 600 hours of rehearsal space, 100 hours of mentoring support and much more. Meanwhile the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme is the UK’s foremost programme of paid professional development for theatre directors. The application window for their 18-month residencies is now open, with Contact Theatre Manchester and Birmingham Repertory Theatre hosting this year’s residents, and we will host a trainee director next autumn. Details on how to apply for both schemes can be found below. Please share with your networks if you think they might be of interest to local theatre makers and creatives. Thank you.

As ever, thanks to Leicester City Council, Arts Council England, and to you – our wonderful audiences – for your continued support.

Best wishes,
Chris & Nikolai