Northampton's theatre 'world beating' - artistic director

Jesse Jones has been the artistic director of the Royal and Derngate since last Summer

The new artistic director of a theatre says it is well known in the industry for staging "world-beating" productions.

Jesse Jones took over the role at the Royal and Derngate in Northampton seven months ago.

He has finalised the rest of this year's programme which will allow the theatre to "continue to punch above our weight".

It includes a number of local actors in major roles.

Mr Jones is a founding member of The Wardrobe Ensemble, which creates new modern plays, and first worked at the venue nine years ago as a resident assistant director.

Jesse Jones says local theatregoers have a world-beating venue on their doorstep

Speaking to BBC Radio Northampton, he said: "I think it's a big selling point in terms of world-leading art coming out of Northampton, and we should be incredibly proud that the theatre maintains that and continues to make world-beating theatre.

"A large part of my job is to think about how we continue to punch above our weight."

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Mr Jones is directing one of the key elements of this year's programme - an adaptation of Herbert Melville's epic novel Moby Dick by the Simple8 theatre company.

"It's one of those books that everybody's heard of but not a huge amount of people have read," he said.

"[We can] breed a kind of imagination and magic of theatre for us to be able to be transported to the Pacific Ocean to be chasing this wild whale, but for that to be conjured [up] by ropes, some planks of wood, some scaffolding and eight [musical] instruments."

Jesse Jones says the way forward is for the Royal and Derngate to work with other theatres on productions

At a time when many British theatres are struggling to keep the curtains open and the lights on, Mr Jones believes getting venues to work together on projects is essential.

"We see ourselves, particularly with new work, needing to bring partners together to both give that work a future life so that will tour round the country, but also to share the risk in terms of the ability to bring those kind of works to the stages," he said.

He also said he was determined to give local actors a chance to star in the venue's productions, with open auditions taking place for all season launches.