Thursday, 4 October 2012

Nearly time to raise the curtain...

The theatre may be closed but there’s an awful lot happening at the Coliseum in the run up to our re-opening at the end of October.

I am currently finalising Curtain Up at the Coliseum - an evening of celebration of the Coliseum which will reopen the theatre. There will be a great selection of extracts from popular Coliseum plays including Sweet Charity, Me Mam Sez, Brassed Off and The Wizard of Oz with a couple of surprises along the way. I have cast a group of brilliant actors who have all played that the Coliseum before and they will perform favourite scenes from the different productions. The cast includes Kenneth Alan Taylor, Sue Devaney and Gemma Wardle. Look out for some more special announcements…
If you want to be part of this special fundraising event, tickets are £25.00 (or £20.00 if you are season ticket holder).

In the meantime, not only is the auditorium and bar being refurbished, the back stage offices are all part of that refurbishment too. Every wall is getting a new coat of paint, carpets are being laid and everyone is have a proper clear out. Needless to say, it’s very busy backstage at the moment and we haven’t even got a production on!

Even though we’re planning the re-opening, the company is also looking back at our recent season out of the building. We hold a retrospective meeting for each of our own productions; discussing how the production was received by audiences, aspects of the set and design (things that worked or could have been improved) and anything else that should be noted and referred to when producing a similar production in the future.



The retrospectives for the last season have an added element which is the new venues and different ways that we had to work under the circumstances. What did we learn from producing a three month tour that travelled to nine different venues? What was it like to work with companies or theatres we had not previously collaborated with? How did we strengthen our relationships with the different venues at which we performed? All of this and more is discussed because it is essential to learn from everything we’ve done since January - especially as this year has been an exceptional year in the Coliseum’s history. This all helps feed into whether we’ll do another tour, or look into the possibility of doing another outdoor performance.

Thank you for all of your support during the year and I look forward to seeing you back in the theatre in October. If you can’t wait until our official opening, the Box Office will be back in their usual home on Monday 22 October so from that date forward you can pop in and book your tickets back in the theatre.

See you back in the theatre.

Kevin Shaw
Artistic Director

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