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J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter play is coming to the stage in London

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will debut on a London stage next year.

 

Aja Romano

Internet Culture

Posted on Jun 26, 2015   Updated on May 28, 2021, 11:46 am CDT

About 18 months after it was first announced, the stage play set in the Harry Potter universe finally has a title and an ETA.

As with all of her major recent news, J.K. Rowling took to Twitter and Facebook earlier today to announce that the play is titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It will be coming to London’s West End next year. 

The play, which Rowling supervised, was written by playwright Jack Thorne. The stage production will be directed by John Tiffany and will feature music by Imogen Heap.

It will premiere at the Palace Theatre, which previously saw the birth and two-decade run of Les Miserables, next summer. Fans can purchase tickets beginning this fall, but given that the theater only seats 1,400 people, you’ll probably have a long, long waiting period.

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Although the play will feature glimpses into Harry’s childhood, Rowling insists it is not a prequel. This seems to contradict recent unconfirmed reports that the storyline would focus on Harry’s parents, James and Lily Potter, and their too-brief life together.

Rowling was tight-lipped about details, apart from confirming that the play would not be a prequel and that she was happy that the theater would serve as the medium for this particular narrative part of Harry’s journey:

Although fans have known about the play since December 2013, the reaction from the Internet over today’s news seemed to imply that many of them had missed the earlier memo. Any addition to the world of Harry Potter is a big deal, and a new story featuring Harry himself is something of a miracle. It’s hard to believe that 19 years into its existence, the world of Harry Potter will be getting two entirely new installments in the form of the Cursed Child and the Fantastic Beasts film trilogy. 

But it’s not hard at all to believe that fans are as excited now as they were two decades ago, when Harry first came into our lives.

Exactly.

Photo via thenerdpatrol/Flickr (CC by 2.0)

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*First Published: Jun 26, 2015, 11:33 am CDT