After consulting with 90 venues in these regions in search of the gaps that exist in theatre programming currently, house have created a £35,000 Commissioning and Touring Award for companies to apply for.

The criteria for productions was decided by house and Arts Council England, combining the need for classic theatre to hook in audiences, with an emphasis on innovation, excellence and extending the theatre form.

The award of up to £35,000 will go towards covering production costs, as well as booking and supporting a tour of up to 20 venues in the East and South East of the country.

In addition, the commissioners will offer contacts, advice, specialist intelligence, equipment and more as support. The commissioners call is open to national and international artists.

For more information, visit the house website.

As well as Portsmouth’s heritage, the Festivities will also be concentrating on the present with many events centred around the oncoming Olympics as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

The launch itself was opened by a fantastic speech from NTR patron Sheila Hancock, followed by a captivating reading of the Dickens classic, Nicholas Nickleby. The Military Wives Choir also hit the stage to perform their live debut, singing their Christmas No.1 “Wherever You Are” as well as “Love Lift Us Up”. See the video below for their performance of “Wherever You Are”.

Another highlight of the evening was Gary Winters, creative director of Lone Twin, and Captain Mark Barham discussing The Boat Project, a huge boat made up of memories. The Boat will be a travelling archive of memories made up of wooden items donated by the public. The pair also announced that a book will be released in May which tells the story of each of the donated items. To find out more about The Boat Project, click here.

The evening was a great success, and we are pleased to say that the Dickens inspired canapes created and served by Caroline and Andrew who have taken over The Conservatory Cafe went down incredibly well. The canapes included spicy boiled beef and beetroot, roasted ham and piccalilli as well as aged Cheddar and Stilton with pear.

For photos from the night, visit the Portsmouth Festivities website.

If you haven’t had the chance to pop in and see us yet, how about downloading our new brochure to have a look at? Although we are still scheduling workshops here at the theatre, we will be going out and about into the city putting on performances and sharing the skills of Team NTR. Find out more about what we’re going to be up to by downloading the brochure from below!

Click here to download the Team NTR brochure!

But first, we must reveal to you that the answer to our question was The Boyfriend.

Our lucky two winners are Joe Birch and Gareth Turpie who have each won a pair of tickets to see Lumen 158 on the Saturday or Sunday. To find out more about the event, click here.

If you weren’t lucky enough to be one of our winners, remember tickets are just £5 and can be booked by calling the Box Office on 023 9264 9000 or by popping in and finding out which spaces are left!

Caroline and Andrew will be bringing you a brand new fantastic menu, including salads, baguettes and sandwiches, light bites, pasta dishes and much more!

Cat, our Digital Marketing Officer was lucky enough to be the first to try out the food. She opted for the Chicken and Chorizo salad – and it was truly delicious!

Come and check out the cafe Monday – Friday between 10am – 2pm.

What is the name of the critically acclaimed musical film that Ken Russell filmed here at the theatre back in 1971?

Send your answer to hello@newtheatreroyal.com with the subject ‘Periplum Competition’ as well as a contact telephone number so we can call you if you are one of the winners to arrange a time for you to come down and check out the fantastic interactive trip! To find out more about the event, click here (don’t worry, it opens in a new window).

The competition will close at 9pm on Wednesday 2 May. The winners will be picked at random and contacted by phone or email at 1pm on Thursday 3 May. Any emails sent after 9pm on Wednesday 2 May will not be counted.

Terms and conditions apply.

1. By entering this competition, entrants agree to be bound by these terms and conditions.
2. Participation in this competition is free.
3. Prize winners tickets cannot be sold, swapped or refunded.
4. This competition is open to those over 16 years old, however a child is entitled to the secondary ticket.
5. No responsibility is taken for tickets lost or stolen.
6. Tickets will be available for collection at the Box Office only. It is the responsibility of the winner to arrange to pick up their prize.
7. The closing date for this competition is Wednesday 2 May at 9pm.
8. Proof of identification will be required when picking up the winning tickets.
9. The winners will be picked at random from a hat.
10. The prize winner will be contacted by phone and/or email no later than Thursday 3 May.
11. The winner will be named on the website, Facebook and Twitter platforms.
12. The results are final and no correspondence will be entered into.
13. If you have any queries about the prize, contact Cat Fyson at lm@newtheatreroyal.com 023 9264 6477.
14. New Theatre Royal will not pass your data to any other party.

We were tweeted by the lovely folks at La Tasca at the beginning of the week, asking us why the NTR team are 5pm Heroes. We told them just how hard we work to bring you great shows and events, and they decided we deserved a Tapas Treat!

The La Tasca team brought us the amazing feast you see above, including a couple of bottles of wine and some San Miguel’s, too! The feast was truly appreciated, and absolutely delicious.

We want to thank everyone at La Tasca for choosing us, and we highly recommend visiting their restaurant which is located at Gunwharf Quays.

There will be four pieces performed, a great variety of drama, with a hint of comedy, too! Find out more about the performances below.

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Sometimes the Sky’s Too Bright  by Maggie Sawkins

Maggie Sawkins’ poetry has been widely published. She lives in Portsmouth where she organises Tongues&Grooves Poetry and Music Club and teaches for The Poetry School.

This tense and moving monologue was originally published as a short story in The Frogmore Papers and tells the story of a teenage boy retreating into a private world while his family changes around him.

“I write about what disturbs me – the human shadow. We forget what it’s like to be young and disaffected at our peril.”

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Forever Foxtrot by Lucy Bell

Lucy Bell is a teacher and playwright. She writes a column for The News and her award-winning play, Jo’s War will be performed in London’s off west end this month.

Whether it is calling a plumber or checking a medical result, all of us will experience intimate or embarrassing phone conversations with total strangers. Forever Foxtrot is a short radio play in a series entitled Hung Up in which the lives of characters from Ambulance dispatchers to Chat line operatives momentarily connect and transform. In Forever Foxtrot, a love-lorn fan of a certain Saturday night TV show misdials when casting her vote and soon after finds herself donning the rhinestoned spandex.

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Middle Aged Woman Disappears by Sue Evans

Sue Evans writes under her Equity name of Suzanne Bowen.  Trained as an actress, she has also written scripts for educational and fringe theatre and for small studio theatres in London, reviews and academic articles.  She has a PhD in contemporary drama, has taught play-writing and fiction writing at local universities and currently, at the Open University.

This intriguing and haunting short play was written for performance in The Actors’ Platform West End Showcase and later shortlisted in an internet film competition.

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Scrotes by Rachel James

Rachel James has a distinctly humane and comic voice and writes about the complexities of social justice from several years’ experience handing out ASBO’s in North Manchester.

The opening of a longer play, Scrotes begins with an Anti-social Behaviour officer visiting the mother of a local tearaway. The two women strike up an unlikely friendship…after all, all’s fair in love and ASBO’s, but is the officer’s own record whiter than white?

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Click here to visit the event page

The ‘bootcamp’ for start-up businesses covered all manner of grounds, including setting up your own e-commerce site, to managing your brand through social media.

Cat, our Digital Marketing Officer live-tweeted the event, and kept an eye on some of the fab testimonials from those present. There are a few of these testimonials below. Please feel free to click the images to visit the users websites.

Thank you to everyone who came to the event, and a special thanks to Doug Richard, James Dening and everyone at School For Startups. We are sure that all those that attended the event took away some valuable advice, and had the opportunity to network with other businesses.

To get into the spirit, Cat tried to write some of her own 140 character (or less!) stories. They are hardly masterpieces but they are good fun to try!

She drew back the curtain, the seats were all filled. She gulped, but smiled and stepped on stage. She felt home here, in spite of nerves.
138 characters

The man woke up from the deepest sleep he’d ever had. Nothing woke him, the world was quiet – too quiet. He opened the window, more silence.
140 characters

The trees swayed with the wind, and the rain came hammering down. Everything was noise and chaos through the window, as she sipped her tea.
139 characters

And here’s an absolute classic, by Fredric Brown – ‘Knock’ aka the shortest horror story ever told.

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door…
65 characters

To get involved in writing your own 140 character (or less) stories for The Lost Hour, all you need to do is text SCR POR followed by your short story to 81333. Texts will be charged at standard network rates. You can send your text until March 20. A selection will be showcased on the big screen on March 24.