Blood curdling screams and memory sharing...

It’s all a bit nerve wracking here at the Coliseum. We’re nearly at the end of our second week of rehearsals for the thrilling Deathtrap and blood curdling screams can be heard all over the building. Actors have taken to strangling each other all week – but of course it’s all in the script. There are few fight scenes which are starting to take shape. Renny, our regular fight director, has been working the actors through the sequences and how to use the props (including a gun, garrotte and cross bow) without actually causing themselves harm. Its tricky stuff, the last thing you want to see on stage is an unconvincing death scene.

Less screaming over in the Education and Outreach Department where there are a couple of new recruits; Richard Hall has just taken the position as Head of Participation and starting in September Paul Adams will fill the role of Creative Development Officer.

Richard previously worked for the Festival of Diversity. Paul has a long standing relationship with the Coliseum and it’s fantastic to now have him as a full time member of the Coliseum team. He has worked on many different Coliseum projects over the last few years and built up a great deal of experience from working with young people, delivering workshops and studying Performance Theatre at University Campus Oldham which has an affiliation with the Coliseum.

Paul also has also set up his own theatre company – 2Tour Theatre – based in Mosley and they are currently working with dementia patients at Calderdale Hospital on a project to recreate their memories. This new company will represent stories told by patients to help the staff better understand who they care for. Another example of how fantastic art can be in contributing to people’s wellbeing.

Now a seamless link onto our memory sharing event we’re holding in October. We have recently been granted Heritage Lottery Funding which will enable local young people to explore the rich history of the Coliseum, archiving past publications for public viewing and creating a performance.

The first event from this project is on 12 October when we’ll be hosting a reminiscence event; sharing photographs from our vast archive, screening a film of the theatre’s history and hearing stories from special performers who have graced the Coliseum’s stage.

The event will be a chance for our patrons, staff, past performers and audience members to come together, share memories and celebrate the past 125 years and the many more years to come.

If you want to come and join us then book your free tickets via the Box Office on 0161 624 2829.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

This week's news from the Coliseum...

After our period of annual maintenance we’re getting back into the swing of things this week, the cast arrived on Monday to start rehearsals for Deathtrap. It can be a little like the first day at school – some of them know each other, most have worked here before, although Russell Richardson who is playing lawyer Porter Milgram is completely new to the Coliseum, but you may recognise him from his many appearances at Bolton Octagon. Regular attenders to the Coliseum will recognise Helen Kay who performed in Absurd Person Singular and One for the Road and Roberta Kerr who was more recently in Blithe Spirit and Quartet. Steven Pinder, who lots of you will recognise as Max Farnham from Brookside, returns after a great performance in our production of Absent Friends. Most of the cast are locally based and regularly attend our performances and they know all about the Coliseum, its atmosphere and its audiences. Andrew Cullimore who plays Clifford has worked at the Coliseum before on rehearsed readings and our writing festival Wordsmith but will be treading the boards on our main stage for the first time this September.

Steven Pinder (front, left) in Absent Friends 2010

On the first day of rehearsals staff from all departments came down to the rehearsal room for a quick meet and greet. The play’s designer talked through a scaled set model – Deathtrap is set in a converted barn with the walls adorned with guns, handcuffs, maces and battle-axes so – as you can imagine – the model looked really impressive. I can’t wait to see it on the main stage. He also showed us all his costume designs. Both the set model and the costume designs give a genuine impression of what the production will eventually look like – although most of the cast are mainly interested in what they’ll be wearing! Next we had the first read through of the script. This was the first time the cast had all been in the same room and we started to get the words off the page and the play on its feet.

Deathtrap is a classic thriller and there’s a great amount of comedy thrown in as well as surprises. This is a fantastic play to work on and it’s been a while since we had a thriller here. The production is fast-paced which will keep the audience guessing right up until the last scene - just when they think they might have it sussed out, another twist comes out of nowhere. As a director I need to make sure the shocks really do shock, there’s a moment when I can guarantee you’ll jump out of your seats…but I can’t anything away!
See you at the theatre,

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

A Summer of Steel Wire Ropes...

For many people summer  means long hot days, relaxing in the garden or on a beach somewhere glamorous, like Filey. For the hardworking and handsome members of the Technical Stage Management team it means dirty sweaty days, inspecting and testing our lifting equipment, organising and repairing our masking flats, and this year, preparing our equipment for the move out of the building.

The inspection and testing of our lifting equipment is something that we do every six months, during the summer, and again after Pantomime. It involves the inspection of every moving part of our counterweight flying system, checking for any imperfections in the steel wires that hold the lighting and scenery over our heads for the rest of the year. Just to throw some numbers at you, the inspection of the flying system involves the individual checking of:

·         750 metres of Fibre Ropes

·         3km of  Steel Wire Ropes

·         20 cups of coffee (6.5 litres I reckon)

·         214 Pulley

·         And over 1000 separate nuts and bolts

The Counterweight Flying System

The grid space where we spend some of our summer

All this before we get to the separate rigging steels, slings, and fixings that we use to fly scenery and lighting. After many years of practice it still takes two of us 40 hours, not including brew breaks, to check all our equipment to comply with LOLER (Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations).

This is also the time we get to make any necessary repairs to our black masking flats, often the only decent repair we can make is to re-cover the whole thing with new material. This is something we need to do every few years and it’s a job that takes up the whole stage, which is why we have to do it during our ‘Dark’ period.

So next time you see that there are no shows on at the Coliseum for a few weeks, remember that the Technical Stage boys are still working as hard as they do when there is a production on, unless of course we are on holiday. In Filey.

- Technical Stage Management Team