Royal National Theatre

Our theatres on the South Bank We presented 18 productions on the South Bank, with our three theatres returning to pre-pandemic capacity levels being 87% full in 2023/24. We premiered 12 new plays which were developed at our New Work Department. Three of the four nominees for Best Play at the 2024 Olivier Awards were National Theatre productions, these were Jack Thorne's love letter to theatre The Motive and the Cue, former writer in-residence Beth Steel's hilarious and heartbreaking Till the Stars Come Down, with the trophy lifted by James Grahams for his hit play Dear England. Will Close took home Best Supporting Actor at the Olivers for his role as England football captain Harry Kane in Dear England, with Mark Gatiss named Best Actor for his portrayal of Sir John Gielgud in The Motive and The Cue. The new plays we presented over the year represented the people and issues of this time and our country - from the birth of the welfare state in Tim Price's Nye, to the criminal justice system in Dixon & Daughters, and the power of community and testimony in Grenfell: in the words of survivors. Our new version of Roald Dahl's The Witches was the largest musical the National Theatre has ever produced and thrilled both critics and audiences. Revivals on our stages ranged from Dodie Smith's Dear Octopus - the first time the play has been seen in London since 1967 - and Josie Rourke's production of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, to searing new versions of Federico Garca Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba and Lucy Prebble's The Effect, which premiered at the NT just over a decade ago. We celebrated our 60th birthday by making 3,600 tickets available for free to 16-25-year-olds. In 2023/24 the proportion of people seeing a National Theatre production for the first time grew by 150%, with 95% of first timers rating the productions they had seen as 'excellent'very good'. River Stage, London's largest free outdoor arts festival, returned for its 7th year. Over four summer weekends, 55,000 people joined us for live music, theatre, dance, family workshops and club nights in partnership with our friends from The Glory, James Cousins Company, Shubbak Festival and Hackney Empire Young Producers. Sharing work beyond the South Bank There has not been a year in our history where we have transferred as many shows to the West End as we did in 2023/24. An extraordinary nine productions made their way to the West End and were seen by 624,047 people. Both Dear England and The Motive and the Cue made the leap across the Thames and we were delighted to bring back our productions of The Crucible, The Lehman Trilogy and the Olivier Award-winning Best New Musical Standing at the Sky's Edge. We introduced London audiences to the Bristol Old Vic production of Dr Semmelweis and the Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop and re-introduced them to the eight-time Tony Award-winning Hadestown, which was first seen at the National Theatre in 2018. Transatlantic traffic was not one way, and we took Jamie Lloyd's production of The Effect, with Taylor Russell and Paapa Essiedu reprising their roles, to The Shed in New York. Following its five-star runs here and in the West End, we were pleased to share Katy Rudd's production of The Ocean at the End of the Lane with audiences across the UK, as it toured to 29 venues over 42 weeks. We remain committed to taking our productions to towns and cities across the UK and are actively working to develop a new, financially sustainable model for touring. Theatre Nation Partnerships Theatre Nation Partnerships (TNP) is our collaborative network of arts organisations, which aims to strengthen their relationships with local audiences, schools and communities. Convened by the National Theatre, the network is made up of theatres and creative organisations across 11 regions. TNP partners are: Cast in Doncaster; The Lowry in Salford; Curve in Leicester; The Queen's Theatre Barnstaple & The Landmark in Ilfracombe; Queen's Theatre Hornchurch; Peterborough New Theatre & Key Theatre in Peterborough; Restoke, Regent Theatre & Victoria Hall in Stoke-on-Trent; Sunderland Empire and Sunderland Culture; Trowbridge Town Hall; Theatre Royal Wakefield; and Wolverhampton Grand Theatre. In 2023/24, we worked with our TNP partners on touring productions, community engagement and audience development activity, in-depth school programmes, expanding access to our digital platforms, and skill and resource sharing across the network. Through the TNP network, we supported a production of My Beautiful Laundrette by Hanif Kureishi, produced by Leicester Curve, that toured to four TNP venues where it reached audiences of over 8,500. We piloted monthly National Theatre Collection library screenings in Wolverhampton and Peterborough, reaching over 600 attendees across the two locations. Following this success from 2024/25 all public libraries nationally will have access to National Theatre Collection 3. Generate Our Generate programme shares the space and resources of our New Work Studio with artists developing work that is destined for stages outside of London. This support includes costs like artist fees and travel expenses, as well as workshopping and writing space, dramaturgical support, and introductions to co-producing partners. This year, once again, a third of our New Work Department research and development workshops were devoted to supporting over 30 theatres and companies from outside of London. Our support facilitated a range of work including the development of new plays, ambitious musicals, classical adaptions, aerial work, access-integrated work as well as productions co-created with young people. National Theatre Live We released eight productions to cinemas in almost 50 countries via National Theatre Live in 2023/24, which were watched by over 750,000 people across more than 20,000 screenings. National Theatre Live's circuit of UK venues has grown across the year and now screens in over 830 venues from cinemas to community centres, reaching more areas of the country than ever before. As well as productions from our stages such as Dear England, we have filmed and distributed work from other theatres, including GOOD with David Tennant, Vanya with Andrew Scott, and Best of Enemies starring David Harewood and Zachary Quinto from the West End. National Theatre at Home A further 19 titles were added to our streaming platform in 2023/24, taking the total number of productions available to over 80. They included our award-nominated productions of The Effect and The Crucible, as well as productions from other theatres and producers including Fleabag from Soho Theatre and Constellations from the Donmar Warehouse. Our production of Othello was streamed free on YouTube for one week to celebrate our 60th birthday, made possible by Bloomberg Philanthropies, and viewed over 185,000 times. National Theatre at Home subscribers watched over 23 million minutes of filmed theatre in 170 countries. All productions are available with captions, 85% are available with audio-description, and we are building on our British Sign Language offering. National Theatre Collection A further 20 titles were added to National Theatre Collection in 2023/24, taking the total number of productions with supplementary materials to 70. All of which can be accessed free by state schools and Further Education colleges. We continued to develop the dedicated National Theatre Collection for primary schools, now with 15 titles available to stream, including the Unicorn Theatre's production of Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger which was launched on World Book Day 2024. Schools across the UK are continuing to subscribe to the National Theatre Collection, with 89% of state secondary schools signed up - this equates to 1.3 million pupils accessing National Theatre Collection across 76,000 classrooms in the UK. Our three-year roll out of National Theatre Collection with the New York City Department of Education and the Fund for Public Schools was successfully completed. Upwards of 32,000 students across New York City's five boroughs (70% of which are considered economically disadvantaged) now have access to National Theatre Collection, and teachers have access to unique professional development opportunities. The National Theatre Collection was also accessed in a further 61 countries by over 900 institutions, offering educational opportunities of worldclass theatre across the world.