Blistering exploration of race, capitalism and performance announced for Spring/Summer 25 Season

25 Sep 2024

Olivier Award-winning director Matthew Xia’s critically acclaimed Tambo & Bones, one of the most talked about cultural events of 2023, is coming to our Courtyard Theatre from 14-24 May 2025 as part of its UK premiere national tour.

An Actors Touring Company, Stratford East and Royal & Derngate co-production in association with Leeds Playhouse, Belgrade Theatre and Liverpool Everyman, Tambo & Bones was written by spoken word poet and playwright Dave Harris and is a blistering exploration of the intersection between race, capitalism and performance.

Directed by director, composer and DJ Matthew Xia (Artistic Director and Joint CEO of Actors Touring Company), whose original production was one of the most talked-about cultural events of 2023, the production is an exhilarating, darkly comic and provocative satire on capitalism and Black performance. It explores the commodification of the Black experience through the mediums of minstrelsy, hip-hop and afro-futurism. Spanning 500 years, performers Tambo and Bones journey from comedy double-act to hip-hop superstars to activists in a future America, contending with the alarming repercussions of a nation torn apart by race. Harris’ blistering play laughs through our past, blows the roof off our present and imagines an explosive future for our world and for theatre.

Director Matthew Xia said: “I’m so excited that Tambo & Bones – our genre-busting headline-grabbing production – is getting a second outing. It is a truly audacious satire, both ridiculous and profound, which combines my greatest passions, hip-hop and theatre, to interrogate perceptions of race in the past, present and future. There is truly no experience quite like it, I can’t wait to see how audiences in Northampton, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Coventry and London respond to this sucker punch of a play.”

The production will tour to Royal & Derngate Northampton (7 – 15 March 2025), Liverpool Playhouse (26 – 29 March 2025), HOME Manchester (1 – 5 April 2025), Belgrade Theatre (9 – 12 April 2025), Stratford East (29 April – 11 May 2025) and Leeds Playhouse (14 – 24 May 2025).

Completing the creative team are set and costume designers Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ, with lighting design by Ciarán Cunningham, Hip-Hop Beats produced by Excalibah and Roly Botha, sound design and additional composition by Richard Hammarton, magic and illusion consultancy by Chris Cox and puppetry design by Hugh Purves.

Tambo & Bones is the latest in a series of acclaimed productions from ATC, one of the only British theatre companies dedicated to producing international plays and presenting them throughout the UK. ATC’s recently celebrated work includes The Architect (2023), Family Tree (2023) and Bodies of Water (2024).

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Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly.

Selected plays include Tambo & Bones (LA Drama Critics Award “Best New Play”, TimeOut London “Best Plays of 2023,”), Exception To The Rule (Roundabout Theatre Company, 2022), and Everybody Black (Humana Festival 2019).

His first feature film, Summertime premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released in 2021.

Selected honors include: the 2023 Horton Foote Prize, the Ollie Award, The Lorraine Hansberry Award and Mark Twain Award from The Kennedy Center, The International Commendation for The Bruntwood Prize, the Venturous Fellowship, and a Cave Canem poetry fellowship amongst others.

Dave has written feature and television projects for AMC (Interview With A Vampire), Netflix, Amazon (The Fortress of Solitude), and FX amongst others. His first full-length collection of poetry, Patricide, was published by Button Poetry.

Matthew Xia is the multi-award-winning Artistic Director of ATC (Actors Touring Company). He was previously Associate Artistic Director at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; Director-in-Residence at The Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse; and Associate Director at Theatre Royal Stratford East. He was Associate Artist at the Nottingham Playhouse alongside James Graham and Amanda Whittington.

Matthew has directed some of the UK’s most talented actors, including Daniel Kaluuya, Cynthia Erivo, Joseph Quinn, Maxine Peake, David Haig, Samuel Barnett, Matt Henry, Karl Collins, Martina Laird, Christopher Colquhoun, Malachi Kirby, David Moorst, Natasha J. Barnes, Yolanda Kettle, and Erin Doherty.

Directing includes: Bodies of Water (ATC/GDIF); Skeleton Crew (Donmar Warehouse); The Architect (GDIF/ATC/Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation); Tambo & Bones (ATC/Theatre Royal Stratford East); the Olivier Award-winning Hey Duggee – The Live Theatre Show (Kenny Wax Family Entertainment/Cuffe & Taylor); the Fringe First Award-winning Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen (Francesca Moody Productions/Bush Theatre); Rice (ATC/Orange Tree); The Wiz (Ameena Hamid Productions/Hope Mill/BBC Big Night of Musicals); Family Tree (GDIF/ATC/Belgrade/Brixton House); 846Live (Stratford East/GDIF); Amsterdam (ATC/Orange Tree/Plymouth Theatre Royal); Blood Knot (Orange Tree); Eden (Hampstead Theatre); One Night In Miami… (Nottingham Playhouse/Bristol Old Vic/HOME); Into The Woods, Frankenstein (Royal Exchange); Wish List (Royal Exchange/Royal Court); Shebeen (Nottingham Playhouse/Stratford East); Sleeping Beauty, The Blacks (Stratford East); Dublin Carol (Sherman Theatre); Blue/Orange, The Sound of Yellow (Young Vic); Sizwe Banzi is Dead (Young Vic/Eclipse); I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky (Co-Director, Stratford East/Barbican); Suckerpunch Boom Suite (Barbican/NitroBEAT).

Matthew has worked with an array of renowned writers as a director and a dramaturg, including; Susan Lori Parks, Dominique Morisseau, Arinze Kene, April D’Angelis, Joe Penhall, Vikki Stone, Katherine Soper, David Levi-Addai, Yasmin Joseph, Mojisola Adebayo, and Nessah Murty. He has been a respected panelist for the Evening Standard Future Fund, Yale Drama Series, the Alfred Fagon Award, BEAM, the Bruntwood Prize and most recently the Eurovision Song Contest!

DJ / Composing / Sound Design includes: presenting an award-winning Hip-Hop show on BBC 1XTRA (DJ); The London Paralympics Opening Ceremony (DJ); The People Are Singing (Royal Exchange); Free Run (Underbelly); That’s The Way To Do It (TimeWontWait); Pass The Baton, Bolero Remixed (New London Orchestra); Da Boyz, Family Man, The Snow Queen, Hansel & Gretel, Medea, and Squid (Stratford East).

Matthew was a founding member of Act for Change. In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts London for his efforts to make theatre universally accessible by working to promote minority groups as theatre leaders, makers, and consumers.