South Bank: 2003-2010

1 April, Nicholas Hytner takes over as Director of the NT, announcing a six-month season in the Olivier for which more than two-thirds of the tickets are £10. The opening production in The Travelex £10 Season is Henry V, with Adrian Lester in the title role.

The National presents its first-ever new opera: Jerry Springer – The Opera helps attract new audiences to the Lyttelton before transferring to the West End. Other West End transfers this year are Anything Goes to Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; Jumpers to the Piccadilly; Vincent in Brixton to the Playhouse; Jerry Springer – The Opera to the Cambridge; and Dinner to Wyndham's.

New work in the Cottesloe includes Kwame Kwei-Armah's Elmina's Kitchen, Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, and Michael Frayn's Democracy.

The epic production of His Dark Materials (Part I, Part II), a two-play adaptation by Nicholas Wright of Philip Pullman's trilogy, is staged in the Olivier.

The National announces a three-year partnership with US theatre producers Bob Boyett and Ostar Productions, for the presentation of the National's work in the United States. The first of these, Jumpers, opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway on 25 April 2004.

2004

The second Travelex £10 Season includes collaborations with Out of Joint (with David Hare's The Permanent Way) and Complicite (with Simon McBurney's production of Measure for Measure).

One of the National's biggest-ever successes, Alan Bennett's The History Boys, opens in the Lyttelton. It goes on to tour all over the UK, to Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and Broadway, and to play in the West End in two separate runs, winning many awards in London and New York, as well as being made into a film.

Primo, based on Primo Levi's If This is a Man, adapted by and starring Antony Sher, opens in the Cottesloe and goes on to transfer to Broadway and to be filmed for the BBC.

Democracy transfers to Wyndham's and to Broadway; The Pillowman and Elmina's Kitchen tour the UK and Ireland.

stagework.org the National's new on-line resource, designed to make theatre practice at the NT and its regional partners more widely available to potential new audiences, is launched with material about Henry V and His Dark Materials (Part I, Part II), including film of rehearsals, performance, auditions and interviews.

2005

Collaborations with Kneehigh Theatre (on Tristan & Yseult in the Cottesloe) and Improbable (on Theatre of Blood in the Lyttelton), plus a co-production with Manchester Royal Exchange (for On the Shore of the Wide World,/a> by Simon Stephens).

Director Mike Leigh's first play for the National, Two Thousand Years opens in the Cottesloe and later transfers to the Lyttelton.

DV8 visit the Lyttelton with Just for Show.

Coram Boy, adapted by Helen Edmundson from the novel by Jamila Gavin, continues the NT's work for young people at Christmas in the Olivier. The first phase of the Big Wall project, produced in-house with Accenture technology, brings touch-screen exploration of the themes and background to Coram Boy to the NT foyers.

Bella Merlin's With the Rogue's Company, following the National's first production of Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 (Part 1, Part 2), is published as part of the series 'The National Theatre at Work'.

The Studio moves to temporary premises at the Oval while waiting for the major refurbishment of its building on the Cut, which will also provide a home for the NT Archive and a space for NT Education.

www.stagework.org receives BAFTA and UN World Summit awards.

2006

Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's musical, Caroline, or Change and David Eldridge's Market Boy each bring 32% of first-time bookers to the National. The Travelex £10 season continues to draw large audiences with classics like The Alchemist and The Life of Galileo. For some shows, up to 60% of ticket bookings are now taken on-line.

Three of the plays from 2005's Connections series – Mark Ravenhill's Citizenship, Enda Walsh's Chatroom, and Deborah Gearing's Burn – are given professional productions in the Cottesloe (Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship).

Conor McPherson's The Seafarer opens in the Cottesloe and later tours the UK and transfers to Broadway. The History Boys wins a record number of Tonys on Broadway. Katie Mitchell and her company's version of Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, uses live video recording in a groundbreaking way.

The Baxter Theatre Centre production of Sizwe Banzi is Dead visits the Lyttelton with John Kani and Winston Ntshona playing the parts they originated thirty years earlier.

2007

Bernard Shaw returns to the NT stage with Marianne Elliott’s production of Saint Joan in the Olivier. Howard Davies’ production of Gorky’s Philistines is another of the year’s highlights. Kwame Kwei-Armah’s trilogy of plays about contemporary black Londoners is completed with Statement of Regret . An adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse opens in the Olivier in a collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company: actors, working with magnificent life-sized horse puppets, conjure up the first world war.

The NT tours for 25 weeks with Rafta, Rafta… , The History Boys , and Chatroom & Citizenship. Happy Days, with Fiona Shaw in the main part, visits Paris, Madrid, Washington, New York, and Epidaurus, where its opening performance is seen by 6,000 people, probably the largest audience ever to see a Beckett play in one evening.

In September, the NT celebrates the centenary of its first director, Laurence Olivier, members of his original NT company sharing a stage with members of the current company.

The NT Studio re-opens in November, after a £6 million refurbishment. It now houses the NT Archive alongside the John Lyon education studio as well as two large spaces for research and development work.

2008

The Deck opens: a summer entertainment space, perched on one of the top terraces of the NT.

After several years of negotiation, the National introduces Sunday performances for part of the year. This experiment is such a success that Sunday opening is permanently adopted in 2009, increasing the NT’s capacity by 2,000 seats a week and enabling it to participate fully in the popular weekend life of the South Bank.

The NT Education department is relaunched as Discover with a programme of events, workshops, and ways to get involved with the National Theatre – for people of all ages.

Peter Handke’s wordless play The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other is staged in the Lyttelton – it has a cast of 25 playing 450 characters. The History Boys is revived in the West End, at Wyndham’s Theatre. Carl Heap’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream tours primary schools; Howard Brenton’s play about Harold Macmillan, Never So Good , with Jeremy Irons in the lead role, is a big success in the Lyttelton; and Ralph Fiennes plays Sophocles’ Oedipus to acclaim in the Olivier. Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Her Naked Skin is the first play by a woman to be staged in the Olivier; a co-production with Live Theatre Newcastle of Lee Hall’s The Pitmen Painters , begins a hugely successful run at the National, first in the Cottesloe, later in the Lyttelton and on tour; and Steppenwolf from Chicago visit the NT with August: Osage County by Tracy Letts.

With the Travelex £10 season in its seventh year, three of the four £10 productions are new plays.

2009

Tom Stoppard’s play for six actors and 42 musicians, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour , plays twice-nightly in the Olivier in a co-production with Southbank Sinfonia, and returns in 2010.

NT Live, digital broadcasting worldwide of live NT performances, starts with a showing of Phèdre, starring Helen Mirren, which is seen on a single day by almost as many people as attend its three-month run in the Lyttelton.

The NT Studio hosts a series of international exchanges – with China, Georgia and Poland. With Happy Days, The Year of Magical Thinking and a revival of Waves touring, the NT is on the road for 21 weeks.

War Horse transfers to the New London Theatre under the NT’s management, with long-term partners NT Angels, and a documentary, Making War Horse is shown on More 4 and released as a DVD.

The millionth Travelex £10 ticket is sold. Each successive year, almost 25% of audiences for these productions have been first-time bookers.

The summer outdoor festival Watch This Space includes a new performance area, Square2, where productions from Poland and France are shown to sell-out audiences.

Repertoire highlights include, as well as Phèdre , Richard Bean’s controversial England People Very Nice ; Peter Flannery’s version of the Russian screenplay Burnt by the Sun; Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art , about Benjamin Britten and WH Auden; David Hare’s investigation of the financial crisis, The Power of Yes ; and Katie Mitchell’s stage version of Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, the National’s first show for 3-6-year-olds, which was filmed for a DVD, released in 2010.

2010

The National’s master plan, now given the title NT Future, gets planning approval from Lambeth. It will open up the building to visitors and transform the NT’s facilities for education and participation.

With War Horse in the West End, NT Live reaching hundreds of cinemas, and touring, the National reaches audiences of 1.4 million worldwide: a record number and twice the audience of eight years ago.

The year’s successes include Boucicault’s London Assurance, starring Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw; two youthful plays from American giants Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill from the Royal & Derngate, Northampton: Spring Storm and Beyond the Horizon; Bulgakov’s The White Guard in a version by Andrew Upton; a revival of Terence Rattigan’s little known After the Dance; JT Rogers’ Blood and Gifts; Ena Lamont Stewart’s neglected 1930s Glasgow drama, Men Should Weep ; Hamlet with Rory Kinnear in the name part; and Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings.