The Pitmen Painters

The Pitmen Painters

The Pitmen Painters

Overview

DIRECT FROM BROADWAY & PRIOR TO WEST END

The Pitmen Painters was voted the Best New Play in the 2008 Evening Standard Awards after a sell-out season and extraordinary reviews at the National Theatre. It was the must-see ticket in Bath in the Autumn 2009 season, since when it has also enjoyed a successful Broadway run. Lee Hall’s play returns with this humorous, deeply moving and timely look at art, class and politics based on a fascinating true story.

In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Every day they continued to work down the mine whilst, at the same time, avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections until life and war intervened and they faded out of the headlines.

Lee Hall is the author of Billy Elliot and brings all the gritty humour and poignancy of that international hit to this work. He recently adapted Nigel Slater’s autobiography Toast for BBC television.