The New Vic is the regional producing theatre for Staffordshire. This means that plays are made here, with around ten major productions each year designed, directed, built, promoted and presented in our special theatre-in-the-round.
Each New Vic production is the end result of months of work by our creative, craft and technical teams. Artistic Director, Gwenda Hughes, works on a number of productions each year supported by in-house set, costume, lighting and sound designers, a costume department and a workshop which builds settings and furniture.
For individual productions, our in-house teams are supplemented by freelance directors, designers and lighting designers, by actors, musicians, voice-coaches, choreographers, fight-directors and the dozens of others needed to bring work to the stage. One of the New Vic’s roles in British theatre is to provide an opportunity for theatre professionals to work in theatre-in-the-round. They also add to the New Vic’s creative energies, helping us maintain the quality and artistic vigour of our work.
As well as these theatre specialists, the New Vic supports a whole range of other jobs. Cleaners, caterers, sales staff, accountants, marketers and administrators are just some of the people needed to run a complex, modern business.
• 10 major play productions each year
• New Vic productions touring to other venues
• visits by leading theatre companies
• concerts by world-class musicians and entertainers
• year-round programme of art exhibitions
• over 450 performances at the New Vic and elsewhere last year
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 We believe that high quality theatre should be available to everyone in the community. Our artistic programme and pricing policies reflect this belief. Each year around 175,000 people use the New Vic. 100,000 enjoy professional performances and 50,000 are engaged with our Education and Borderlines teams. Others use the building for meetings and conferences, they come to view our exhibitions or they simply use our restaurant, bars and shop. Our visitors are drawn from a large catchment area. Around 50% have Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme postcodes and a further 25% are from other parts of Staffordshire. Most of the remainder travel from South Cheshire, North Shropshire and Derbyshire, although we are visited by people from throughout the country and from overseas. |
The programme of plays offers a rich mix of productions chosen to appeal to the widest range of people and tastes: from acknowledged classics. Our Christmas productions are for the whole family and are now enjoyed by around 25,000 adults and children each year. In a strand of our programme that is unique in regional theatre, the adaptations of classic music theatre by Artistic Associate, Chris Monks, have become a highlight of the programme. Acclaimed productions of The Magic Flute, The Mikado, The Marriage of Figaro and Carmen have been both critical and popular successes. 
Whilst we must earn a substantial part of our income from ticket sales, our pricing policies are designed to ensure that as many people as possible can afford to enjoy our work. Anyone can see all New Vic productions for £6.50 and there are discounts for older people, children, students and disabled people. In schemes unique to the New Vic, under-16’s can go free to many of our productions and people in receipt of some means-tested benefits can see New Vic productions for just £1.00. |