In the spotlight with Oldham Young Carers

We are a group of young carers who have been learning about drama with Oldham Coliseum. As part of our project with theatre, we have learnt about how the they sell their shows by making posters. We also interviewed Russell Richardson, an actor from Coliseum play Deathtrap, to find out more about the play and what it’s like to be an actor.

Is Deathtrap a horror play?

Russell as Porter Milgrim in Deathtrap

It’s a thriller with lots of shocks. You can hear the audience go “ARGH!”
What is your character’s attitude like?
I play Porter Milgrim who is a happy guy. He’d love to be a playwright and is in awe of the writer character in the play.

Do you get to choose your character?
The only I decide is how he sounds, I was chosen by the director at the audition to play this specific part.

Who designs your outfit?
Someone called the designer. As an actor you can have your say but the designer decides what the set looks like and what you wear.

Does your character sing?
He would probably love to but no, it’s not in the script.

Do you dress up in silly clothes?
Sometimes – depending on the play. I like it actually, but for this play it’s an ordinary suit and tie for me.

How many rehearsals to you have?
Three weeks, Monday to Friday, 10:00am – 6:00pm.

What’s more fun to play, a goodie or a baddie?
A pantomime baddie is great fun. It nice to be booed and then tell everyone to shut up!

What is your favourite play?
Waiting for Godot

Do you prefer TV or stage work?I prefer stage work but TV work is good for the career. Theatre is what I really like though.

What’s your most common role?
A policeman on TV.

How many plays have you been in?
Can’t remember – a lot! Lots of Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

What’s it like to be an actor?
Exciting. It can be terrifying as there’s an enormous amount to remember but it’s a nice way to earn a living.

What inspired you to be an actor?
At school I discovered I liked acting. Then I went onto drama school and there was a teacher there who was really supportive and made me want to pursue it as a career. I started when I was just 22 years old.

Have you ever forgotten your lines?
Sometimes but actors help each other out. It’s just really important to keep calm.

Is it scary on stage?
It can be and it should be. If I’m not nervous I worry.

Do you get tired?
You do even though the play is only for a few hours a day. But those hours are a very concentrated period. You can’t sit down, you can’t relax, you can’t stop for a cup of tea.

What’s your favourite thing about the Oldham Coliseum?
It’s a really friendly place to work and I love it. It’s the first place I came to see theatre when I was younger and this play is the first time I’ve worked here so I’ve come full circle.

Russell was great to interview and we learnt a lot about what is like to be an actor.

- Oldham Young Carers

Now and then...

The Coliseum recently held a reminiscence event to celebrate the last 125 years of theatre, with over 500 people in the audience sharing their memories. Kenneth Alan Taylor (the Coliseum’s ex-Artistic Director) hosted the event. Kenneth and Front of House Manager David Rustidge spoke about the old days of the Coliseum and it was really interesting to see how much the theatre has changed over the years.

Kenneth first appeared at the Coliseum back in 1959 and back then the theatre operated as a theatre club so all productions were for members only. The demand to come and see productions at the Coliseum was so high that there was a never ending waiting list to be in the Theatre Club.

Actors - including Kenneth – would perform a different play every week. The company would run through a dress rehearsal on the Monday afternoon and perform that night. They would then start work on the next week’s play the following day, working on each of the acts through the week. Saturday would be busy with a matinee and evening performance and then on Monday the process would start all over again. No technical rehearsal – this is when all the lighting and sound effects are planned out – instead the company would just have work through it during the dress rehearsal.

The cast would provide their own costumes for every play. Easy for the males who normally would just need to find a dinner jacket or lounge suit– not so easy for the females who would have to have a seemingly endless supply of evening gowns each week. In fact, one actress was employed purely on the strength of her own costume hamper.

These days it’s very different, we spend over three weeks rehearsing the play with four days set aside to get the lighting and sound right. We also have our own wardrobe department making and sourcing costumes and our set is built by professional carpenters.



Of course, a lot of other things have changed during those years, notably the amount of things on offer for people to do in their spare time like TV and cinema. In spite of all the 3D and special effects there’s nothing that can compete with the experience of live theatre – action taking place literally in 3D right in front of your eyes. It’s a testament to this unique experience that the Coliseum is still going strong after all these years.

The main thing that struck me on that evening of celebrating the Coliseum’s history was to see just how proud both Kenneth and David were of what the theatre was doing back then and how much they still value to work that we produce here. I’m proud of how far the Coliseum has come, introducing an extensive programme of education and outreach activities and championing new writing, but this wouldn’t have been possible without all the dedication and hard work that has gone on throughout the last 125 years.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Location, location, location...

This week I’ve been visiting various places around Oldham looking for potential sites for the Coliseum’s summer show that we’ll be producing while we’re out of the building. I was looking for an exciting and unusual location to use as a performance space. The play is currently being written by Oldham born playwright Ian Kershaw who penned Union Street in 2007 and is a regular writer on the TV series Shameless.
The Coliseum will be working alongside Oldham Theatre Workshop to produce the show. Ian attended one of their workshops last week to introduce the young people to the project as they will all be heavily involved in this exciting project.

James Atherton, Oldham Theatre Workshop’s creative director, Ian and I explored several potential sites around the borough together. There are many things to consider with this type of production, not only does it need to be physically possible to stage a play at the location but the atmosphere and geography of the place should inspire the writer and have a direct impact on the story. Ian had actually been to a lot of the places already and he was able to talk about his ideas for the story and how the play might be put together. This is a brilliant opportunity to find new ways of staging plays; we were not only developing the story but also exploring all sorts of other aspects such as the different ways the actors can join the action and what possibilities open up if the audience are able to walk from scene to scene. At the moment we think the new play will be an open air production – get your umbrellas out! In the next few weeks I’ll be approaching lots of different community groups, dance troupes and brass bands to see if they can get involved in the play, making sure the whole community are part of this fantastic event.

Thank you to everyone who came to our 125 year anniversary event last Wednesday. It was a really interesting and valuable experience to hear so many different memories and stories about the Coliseum from not only past performers but audience members too. If you missed out, don’t worry, they’ll be another event towards the end of the project in January.

Katie Moore (Laura) and Harry Livingstone (Jim) in The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie opened last night. The production has got some great reviews from its run in Stoke, here’s my personal favourite: “…it sparkles every bit as much as the animals in Laura’s glass menagerie.” and it certainly does. I’m looking forward to hearing what our audience think of it.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Stages come in all shapes and sizes...

The Glass Menagerie cast and company have arrived in Oldham from the New Vic Theatre in Stoke and the play opens at the Coliseum this Thursday. The New Vic’s auditorium is configured in-the-round – which means that the audience are seated on all four sides of the stage (like Taking Steps will be at The Grange in the New Year). This is different from the Coliseum stage which is known as an end-on proscenium arch stage, where the audience faces the stage, at only one end and the proscenium arch which is the frame you watch the play through. The Palace and Opera House in Manchester have this type of stage.

Model box of The Glass Menagerie end-on set at the Oldham Coliseum

The most exciting thing about our collaboration with the New Vic for And a Nightingale Sang last year was working in a different shaped auditorium. The challenge of a different shaped stage is nothing new for touring companies that travel the country putting on their shows at a variety of venues – it’s an everyday occurrence. For example, Northern Broadsides Theatre Company are based in the Viaduct Theatre in Halifax which has a traverse stage. Traverse staging has the audience seated on opposite sides of the stage facing each other with a corridor of stage in between them. Yet Northern Broadsides will tour to any venue regardless of the type of stage, adapting for whichever scenario.

Model box of The Glass Menagerie in-the-round set at the New Vic Theatre

It’s not all about the shape of the stage and auditorium; it’s mainly about the audience’s experience in those different spaces. Something that makes theatre stand out from a lot of other art forms is the sense of a shared experience. If you can also see other members of the audience you can see their reactions to what’s going on in front of them. The intimacy of watching live action take place before your eyes with reactions in real time is something extremely unique to performance art, no matter what the space is like.

Working with designer Michael Holt - who has a long history with both the Coliseum and New Vic Theatre - on The Glass Menagerie has been fantastic because he knows both spaces inside and out having worked at both theatres many times in the past – he knows the dos and don’ts. Couple this with the fact that both theatres produce similar work with a similar style, the collaboration has been a great success. It just a case of waiting for the curtain to go up on Thursday night.

See you at the theatre,
Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Come and tell us your stories about the Coliseum...

Next Wednesday 12 October the Coliseum is hosting a special event to celebrate the last 125 years of the theatre’s rich history. This is part of a much larger project that has been made possible through funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund which helps communities learn more about their local heritage. The premise is to make the country’s heritage more accessible to everyone. The money we’ve received has been allocated from the Young Roots programme which is specifically designed to engage young people with their heritage.

As part of the project a team of young people will record a collection of oral history clips with people associated with the theatre’s history including staff members, actors and our audience. They’ll tell the team their fondest memories of the Coliseum. The group will also organise a historical exhibition which will be displayed at the theatre – this will include images of old programmes, posters and other materials from the Coliseum’s history.

The group of young people got together for the first time a few weeks ago and have been working with staff at the Coliseum to organise the 125 year anniversary celebration event along with project leader Carly – the Coliseum’s outreach officer. On the night we’ll be sharing photographs from the archive, screening a film of the theatre’s history and hearing stories from special performers who have graced the stage. Kenneth Alan Taylor will be hosting the evening – and I’m sure, telling us a few secrets about the theatre – along with some entertainment from Bernard Wrigley.

This evening of memory sharing will contribute to a piece of theatre that the group will devise during the project and they’ll perform it in the new year. There will also be a DVD made of the whole process which will itself become part of the archive.

One major part of the project that I haven’t mentioned yet is that the entire Coliseum archive has been boxed up and transported over to the Local Studies and Archives building on Union Street. Every last scrap from the very beginnings will be carefully catalogued. This will all be digitally scanned as well so it’ll be much easier for the people to access it – which is the whole point of the project! If you’d like to attend the event on Wednesday ring our box office on 0161 624 2829 and book your free ticket.

I must mention the fantastic tour of Equus that London Classic Theatre have been performing at the Coliseum all week. It’s a haunting and moving piece of the theatre and certainly worth a look before the tour leaves us on Saturday.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director