Citizens Theatre - Citizens Theatre History

Citizens Theatre History

"The Citizens Theatre is probably more important as part of Britain's heritage than perhaps many imagined. It is Britain's oldest fully functioning professional theatre which retains the greater part of the historic auditorium and stage... This leaves the Grand Theatre, Leeds which opened six weeks before the Citizens (nee Her Majesty's) but which had all its stage machinery destroyed 30 years ago. The Citizens is thus a British national treasure."

- Iain MacIntosh, Theatre Specialist, November 2007.

The theatre was built in 1878 (as The Royal Princess's) and designed by Campbell Douglas, a friend and contemporary of Alexander Thomson (Alexander "Greek" Thomson). It was one of 18 theatres built in Glasgow between 1862 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 (during the same period seven were built in Edinburgh). There were four theatres built in this area: The Palace (demolished), The Princess's Royal (the Citizens), the Coliseum (demolished), and the New Bedford Theatre, adapted as the Carling Academy Glasgow. The remaining theatres built in this period still operating in Glasgow are the Pavilion Theatre, Glasgow, the King's Theatre, Glasgow, the Theatre Royal, Glasgow and the Citizens Theatre.

When it opened, the theatre seated 1,200, and presented melodrama, variety and pantomimes. By the 1880s the Royal Princess and its neighbour the Palace Theatre were surrounded by the acknowledged worst slum in Europe, called the Gorbals. In the 1930s the Palace was converted to a cinema. The advent of television further drew off audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. By the time the slums of the Gorbals had been cleared, the Palace had become a bingo hall. Together with the Royal Princess's Theatre and the swimming baths and tenement opposite, these were the only buildings remaining from the Victorian age.

The Citizens Theatre Company was formed in 1943 by a group of theatre-minded men led by Tom Honeyman and James Bridie, the latter Scotland's then best-known playwright. The name of the new company was taken from the manifesto drawn up in 1909 by Alfred Wareing of the newly formed Scottish Playgoers Co Ltd for their repertory company, which was to provide live theatre for the citizens of Glasgow, staging new Scottish and international drama, opening at the Royalty Theatre.

The 1909 manifesto of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre expressed these tenets: "The Repertory Theatre is Glasgow's own theatre. It is a citizens' theatre in the fullest sense of the term. Established to make Glasgow independent from London for its dramatic supplies, it produces plays which the Glasgow playgoers would otherwise not have the opportunity of seeing."

This manifesto inspired the vision of James Bridie as he led the efforts to found the repertory group, the Citizens Company, in 1943. Originally based at the Athenaeum theatre (now the Old Athenaeum) in Buchanan Street, Bridie's Citizens Company relocated to the Victorian-era Royal Princess's Theatre in the Gorbals in 1945 at the invitation of Harry McKelvie, "The Pantomime King". Bridie renamed it the Citizens Theatre and the Citizens Company opened on September 11, 1945.