Opening 13 May 2011

The Pitmen Painters is a play based on actual facts, and inspired by the book about the Ashington Group of painters by the art critic William Feaver. Following a sell-out run at Live Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne in 2007, and its immediate transfer to the Royal National Theatre in London in 2008, a Broadway production opened on 30 September 2010 featuring the original cast.
The action of The Pitmen Painters takes place between the years 1934 and 1947 when Ashington Group achieved its breakthrough and enjoyed its biggest success. In 1934 a group of miners in Ashington decided to embark on an adult education class in Economics. As they failed to find a tutor on a short notice, they hired an art historian, Robert Lyon. Astounded by his approach, the miners realized that they wouldn’t be learning about art quite the way they had imagined. They started enquiring about art and debating about its essence and purpose. And in no time they took up painting too. Some of them became artists in their own right, although they still worked in the pits.
The Pitmen Painters is an eloquent drama full of intelligent, witty, and truly virtuoso dialogue about art and life, about friendship, companionship and love, about our relation to art, and, ultimately, about common uneducated miners discovering art and creating extraordinary things.