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