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