National Theatre HD Goes Global

Local audiences across the UK and further afield are being given the opportunity to see a top theatre production live and direct from London.
Next weekend - thanks to the National Theatre (NT) and Belfast's Queen's Film Theatre (QFT) - NT Live will host a live broadcast of Terry Pratchett's Nation from the National Theatre to the QFT (Saturday 30 January at 1.45pm).
Adapted by Mark Ravenhill, Nation is described as an "exhilarating adventure story of survival and self-discovery featuring live music, dance and extraordinary puppets, suitable for ages 10 and above".
"The NT Live events are designed to bring what we do on the stages of the National to a far greater number of people than we would ever be able to reach otherwise," said NT Director Nicholas Hytner.
"We've been thrilled by the response of cinemas and audiences around the world to this new experiment. It means we can reach tens of thousands of people in addition to our work in London and on tour."
Plays in the NT Live season are filmed in high definition (HD) using innovative digital technologies and broadcast via satellite to cinema venues throughout the world. Featuring Dublin actress Emily Taaffe in the lead role of Daphne, Nation follows the hugely successful broadcasts of Phèdre and All's Well That Ends Well.
Susan Picken, Head of QFT said: "We are tremendously excited about the forthcoming live broadcast of Terry Pratchett's Nation.
"The combination of one of the UK's best-selling authors, one of the world's most celebrated theatre companies and a homegrown actress in the lead role makes for an unmissable show for all the family," she enthused.
Nation is set in a parallel world in 1860 where two teenagers, Mau and Daphne, are thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home.
Mau wears next to nothing, Daphne a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive.
As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer.
Mau fights cannibal raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe's fiercely patriarchal gods.
Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.
See:
www.queensfilmtheatre.com
(BMcC/GK)