A MAJOR new season focusing on the lives and works of the Bronte Family begins at West Yorkshire Playhouse next month. (September)

The playhouse has worked with the Bronte Parsonage Museum to put on a series of high quality stage shows, as well as other events such as a debate, panel discussion and readings from letters written by the Brontes.

The first production in this season will be Northern Ballet's staging of Wuthering Heights, which runs from September 6 to 10.

Emily Bronte’s romantic masterpiece will be performed to live music by Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated Claude-Michel Schönberg, with choreography by David Nixon.

From September 24 to October 15 the playhouse will present Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, which has been "re-imagined" by Yorkshire writer Linda Marshall-Griffiths.

With echoes of the illness and loss that wracked Charlotte Bronte’s own life, the play will explore the redemptive power of love and the uncertainty of holding on to it.

From October 20 to 22 the theatre promises to present the Brontes in a radically new light, via a musical drama called Wasted.

This tells the story of misfit kids from a Yorkshire village yearning to be heard, finding fame beyond their wildest hopes and dying tragically young.

The drama has been billed as being full of energy, emotion and humour, with songs inspired by the Brontes' shocking, controversial genius.

Wasted has already won a prestigious award from the Kevin Spacey Foundation.

Visit wyp.org.uk/events/the-bronte-season/ for tickets and details of further Bronte Season events at West Yorkshire Playhouse.