When I meet Elizabeth Newman, the new artistic director at Sheffield Theatres, the World Snooker Championship is in full swing and Tudor Square is filled with spectators, both pouring out of the venue after the morning session and those filling the deckchairs in front of the big screen that has been erected there. 

It’s a fantastic sight and is one that is familiar to Elizabeth who grew up watching the sport on TV with her ‘Pops’.

After the announcement of her first season, which starts in the autumn, she will be hoping to emulate this kind of engagement that extends far beyond the auditoria. And with talks of football pitches, double-decker buses and more, she might well just do it.

Elizabeth took up her new post in December 2024 after seven years at Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland, replacing outgoing artistic director Robert Hastie. Previously she was also artistic director at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, the Shared Property Theatre Company, and was deputy artistic director at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

Having relocated to Sheffield with her family, she already feels at home and reaction to the new season announcement has been incredibly positive. 

“It’s really inspiring being in Sheffield, it’s full, it’s vibrant and I feel very at home in different ways,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a big change for the organisation when the artistic director changes but it’s been brilliant, the team here are really lovely.”

Elizabeth joined an executive team that also includes chief executive Tom Bird and deputy chief executive Bookey Oshin. It’s a dynamic she’s worked in before and one that clicked straight away.

“That relationship between chief exec and artistic director, you sort of have to be one brain almost,” added Elizabeth. “Very naturally it became that without much effort, which is always the best way. The main thing is, we smile. If you can come into work and make each other smile, then you’re flying.”

There was no ‘easing in’ for Elizabeth whose first job (in January this year) was to welcome the Montgomery Theatre into the Sheffield Theatres fold, becoming the fourth member of the family. 

“I always joke that although it’s our newest child, it’s actually our oldest,” laughed Elizabeth. 

The ‘Monty’ as it’s affectionately known, actually dates back to 1886.

Elizabeth’s first production will be Dancing at Lughnasa, a play by dramatist Brian Friel set in County Donegal, Ireland in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg. It is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator, who recounts the summer in his aunts’ cottage.

A huge fan Friel’s work, Elizabeth had huge success north of the border with another of his works, Faith Healer, which she toured around the highlands and islands and won loads of awards for. 

“It was one of the most profound experiences of my life with three extraordinary actors – George Costigan, Kirsty Stuart and an amazing man called Richard Standing,” she recalled. “Sheffield Theatres has a long history of doing Friel’s writing but has never done Dancing at Lughnasa before.

“It’s beautiful and it’s got an amazing eruption of dance. I hope [the audience] will find it moving and beautiful and important. It felt important to me that we continue the history of doing great plays in the Crucible.”

As I speak to Elizabeth, casting is already well underway with local auditions seeing her meet 175 actors in two days.

Following the Christmas production – A Christmas Carol – the start of 2026 will see Shakespeare return to the Crucible’s thrust stage in the form of Macbeth.

“This will be a new adaptation done with the Utopia Theatre Company,” said Elizabeth. “I think it’s one of the greatest plays ever written in regards in how to understand writing and humanity and politics and the interaction between the two. The idea of doing a new version felt really exciting and doing it with Utopia felt really special.”

Which then brings us to the football pitch. The Ladies Football Club is a brand-new production that explores the remarkable origins of war-time women workers making football their own. Running from 28 February to 28 March, Elizabeth is hoping to capitalise on the growing support for women’s football by turning Tudor Square into an arena with the intention of hosting a community tournament, highlighting these trailblazers even further. Tim Firth is already on board and is already writing brass music for the production. 

This same square may then have a double-decker bus adorning its cobbles [very much still to be confirmed] in the summer of 2026 as Summer Holiday rolls into town, another play that is very familiar to Elizabeth.

“I’ve done it a couple of time before,” she commented. “It really is an amazing musical, it’s banger after banger after banger… it feels really vibrant. It’s about people going out into the world, it’s about freedom of movement and travel, it’s about encountering cultures that are different to your own and about living your own destiny, that feels pretty important for now.

“The play will happen in the Crucible but probably break the line around the edge… if I’ve got my way you’ll be dancing on the stage by the end.”

Audience engagement is hugely important to Elizabeth and definitely forms a huge part of her legacy aims.

“I just really want Sheffield to be really proud of their theatres,” she beamed. “And also that we ensure that every child and young person has access to the theatre. That we are a place for artists to thrive and where they are nourished, supported and loved.

“My task as artistic director is to cultivate and generate, nourish that sense of belonging for everyone in the city with the theatres.” 

Tickets for Dancing at Lughnasa are now on sale. Call 0114 249 6000 or visit
http://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk