Refurbishment Blog #01: It's Started!

It’s started!  We’re actually moving out.  The final performance at the Coliseum was a five-hour epic from Ken Dodd on Sunday 15th January.  On Monday morning the trucks arrived and the whole Coliseum team has become involved in stripping down and emptying the building.

We’ve set up a temporary base in the Old Library on Union Street in Oldham.  This is a fine Victorian Building, in very good condition and has been leant to us by Oldham Council for the duration of the works at the theatre.  We’re now rehearsing Alan Ayckbourn’s Taking Steps there and both the cast and the crew appear to be very comfortable in their new home.

We’re also redecorating a shop at 12 Albion Street in the Town Centre which will become our new box office this time next week.  We’ve a busy schedule of performances to sell, as we will continue to produce and present plays all the time the Coliseum is closed. With every day that goes by the Coliseum gets emptier and emptier and equipment and furniture moves to its new home. 

I’m delighted that we have found very good use for the old theatre seats, which are being replaced in a few months as part of the refurbishment.  We have donated seats to Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, a newly-refurbished cinema in Lincoln and even the Old Vic Tunnels in London!  It looks likely that not a single seat will go to waste and I’m really proud that we managed to recycle them.
It’s now full steam ahead on the refurb.  Our landlord, Oldham Council have placed an order with the main supplier, Globe Management Services, sub-contractors are being booked and we handover the theatre on Monday 13th February.  This is the day the asbestos contractors move in….

David Martin
Executive Director

Moving and Awards at the Coliseum

There is a huge sense of change and excitement around the organisation at the moment. The big move out of the building has been in the planning stages for nearly a year and now it’s all starting to feel very real (and exciting). Last week the production teams were making sure the Old Library was ready for the Taking Steps cast to start rehearsals on Monday. All the props from the store have been moved over and are being stored on the old library book shelves… but we have not alphabetised them though. The marketing and admin teams have made sure the green room (where the actors have their breaks) is welcoming with production photography and posters on the walls and nice comfy sofas.

It’s an absolutely beautiful and spacious building, we’re certainly not used to having an awful lot of room! The cast have a fantastic rehearsal area and are settling into the building. A couple of familiar faces in the cast include Jackie Morrison and Maeve Larkin who were both in Private Lives this time last year. The rest are all new to the Coliseum.

Steven Pinder in Deathtrap

Speaking of Private Lives, the Manchester Theatre Awards nominations were announced last week and the Coliseum has received eight including Best Production for Private Lives and Best Actor for James Simmons who played Elyot. Harry Livingstone got a nomination for his role as Jim in The Glass Menagerie as well as Emma Matthews for her role as Sylvia in Stepping Out – both for Best Newcomer. Our regular designer Foxton also got some recognition for the fantastic work on Deathtrap and Stepping Out. Dick Whittington also got a nod for Best Special Entertainment and Dancing at Lughnasa (a tour we received from The Original Theatre Company) received a nomination for Best Visiting Entertainment.

While Taking Steps reaches the end of the first week of rehearsals, work on The Hound of the Baskervilles continues. I went over to the Lawrence Batley Theatre for their season launch last week where we open the show before taking it on tour. I had a chat with the artistic director on stage about the production and why I chose to programme it. I held auditions recently and have nearly finalised the cast and cannot wait to get started with rehearsals. Remember, if you’re worried about how to get to Huddersfield we’re laying on some coaches which with a pick up from Bradshaw Street car park.

See you out and about.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

This week's news from the Coliseum...

Tomorrow night sees the final performance from a group of young people who have been working on an exciting project about the 125 year history of the Coliseum. The project began last year when we held a Reminiscence Event, the night was a great success with a packed auditorium full of people sharing their memories of the theatre. Special guest Kenneth Alan Taylor (ex-Artistic Director) and front of house manager David Rustidge - who is longest serving member of Coliseum staff – were the master of ceremonies. There was also a screening of a fascinating film of the Coliseum in the 1950s from the archive.

The project has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Young Roots programme which is specifically designed to engage young people with their local heritage. The young people involved in this project have been creating the performance over the last few months which has been inspired by Coliseum’s history. The 15 strong cast have been meeting once a week to put together the piece and this evening is the technical rehearsal – setting up all the light and music cues - for tomorrow night.

The show will open with a video trailer which will include clips from different stages of the project and what the group have been up to. The group will then zip through the last 125 years of the theatre (not an easy task!). There will also be the first unveiling of the exhibition display that was commissioned as part of the whole project. The display includes a selection of archive production photography and programmes from over the years along with little snippets about the Coliseum’s past. People who take part in the various educational drama groups - from Drama Daze (our weekly drama group for 5 – 12yr olds) to Full Circle (our creative classes for over 50s) - were consulted about how the stand would look and what should be included. It looks fantastic and you’ll be able to have a look at it when it’s erected at our new Box Office site at Unit 12 on Albion Street.

The project has also included the cataloguing of the Coliseum’s archive which is now in the process of being digitally scanned and logged at the Local Studies and Archives building on Union Street. There has also been a series of community workshops based on the archive at Barnardo's Asha Project and the young artists at Square 1 Recording Studios have created a soundtrack for the show. Students from University Campus Oldham who have recently formed a new production company – New Generation Productions – have created the visual effects for the performance.

I’m looking forward to seeing all the different aspects of the project come together on stage tomorrow evening. 

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Taking Steps out of the building...

We’re packing our bags, ready to leave our Fairbottom Street venue. The last panto performance is on Saturday night and on Sunday Coliseum favourite Ken Dodd will be the last performer at the theatre before we return in October.

We’ve been moving various props, furniture and other exotic theatrical equipment to the old library on Union Street since the summer. All the backstage teams will be working there, the wardrobe department will be sourcing and making the costumes for each production and technical stage management will also have their workshop there. The library will also be set up with a large rehearsal space. This is a fantastic way to make use of this beautiful historical building that would otherwise be empty.


The box office staff have been busy relocating everything to Unit 12 in Tommyfield Market where you’ll be able to buy your tickets for the new season. We’re making sure that the place will be full of eye catching displays about the theatre so you’ll feel at home when you pop in. It will be open to the public in February with the box office team ready to help.

We’ve also made sure The Grange Arts Centre is ready for opening night of Taking Steps in February. There will be a box office open from an hour before the show starts every night as usual so you can purchase tickets on the night. The Grange Arts Centre is easy to find too, located right next to Oldham College and Oldham Academy North on Rochdale Road. If you’re not sure how to get there just ring 0161 624 2829 for more information or drop into the box office at Unit 12.

A lot of people have asked me what changes will take place to the building while we’re out - a little worried that it’ll become super modern with glass walls and wacky designs. I can assure you that is not going to happen. If you’re a regular to the Coliseum you’ll already know that the auditorium can very often be either too hot or too cold so the main changes to the building will be to improve the heating and ventilation. The auditorium will also be entirely re-seated to make it more comfortable and more leg room with better views of the stage.

Until then, make sure you catch the pantomime before it comes to an end for another year.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

Anyone for Snooker?

Happy New Year, 2012 will be a very busy and exciting year for the Coliseum and I can’t wait to get started. Once Dick Whittington finishes on Saturday 14 January our production team will be moving to the Old Library where they will be based for the next six months preparing our productions which will be presented at The Grange Arts Centre, Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield and in the open-air at Alexandra Park. The first production of the New Year is Snookered at University Campus Oldham. This is a brand new play by new playwright Ishy Din which we are producing in association with Tamasha Theatre Company (Wuthering Heights).

Ishy Din, writer of Snookered

New writing is the life blood of the theatre industry and it’s extremely important that it is supported and developed; without new plays live theatre would become simply stagnate. There are many different ways new plays get staged. Established playwrights usually have a good relationship with various theatres and either approach the theatres directly to talk about a new idea or a theatre might seek them out to ask them to create something for them. The Coliseum also supports writers by offering small commissions to playwrights so they can work on their ideas. They will develop storylines, characters and some sample scenes which we can work on; hopefully we will then move to a full commission which will result in a new play being stage at the Coliseum. 

Upcoming playwrights work their way up through different writing groups such as WritingLAB here at the Coliseum, North West Playwrights and BBC Writer’s Room. These groups help nurture their talent and are an integral part of the playwriting industry. Ian Kershaw, for example, was a member of our writing group and we nominated him as one of fifty writers to receive a year’s training and mentorship from Royal Court Theatre in London. He is now a regular writer on Shameless and is currently working on Star-Cross’d, a re-working of Romeo and Juliet for our summer production in Alexandra Park.

Ishy Din is another playwright with a long standing relationship with the Coliseum; he came second in the writing competition we ran with Tamasha in 2007. Ishy is a taxi driver and had never written a play before but we discovered he has a brilliant an ear for characters, no doubt developed by listening to people in the back of his cab. Both the Coliseum and Tamasha have been helping him develop his talent by offering him mentorship from more established professional writers - and now Tamasha have commissioned him to write Snookered.

As Ishy says, ‘I used to be a taxi driver and now I’m a playwright who drives a taxi.’ I am really proud of what Ishy has achieved over the last few years and I’m sure Snookered - which goes on national tour after it opens in Oldham – will boost his career even further.

See you at the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director