An unlikely marriage of hard graft and art

PRODUCED by Newcastle’s Live Theatre, and following sell-out seasons at the National Theatre and on Broadway, Bill Kenwright presents the award-winning play The Pitmen Painters.

Written by Lee Hall, creator of the worldwide sensation Billy Elliot and directed by Max Roberts, The Pitmen Painters, has received huge critical acclaim and won the Evening Standard award for Best New Play.

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. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine. Examining the lives of a group of ordinary men that do extraordinary things, The Pitmen Painters is a humorous, moving and timely look at art, class and politics.