History
- For details of the pre-2009 productions at the theatre and its original owners, see Derby Playhouse
Roderick Ham, who had already designed the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead, was commissioned to design the theatre, and the Derby City Council offered the site as part of the new shopping development, the Eagle Centre. It was officially opened as the Derby Playhouse on 20 September 1975 by the 11th Duke of Devonshire.
From its opening until October 2008, the theatre was owned and operated by Derby Playhouse Ltd. The company, which had a history going back to 1948, opened its first season in the new theatre with My Fair Lady, followed by Hamlet and concluding the following summer with Alan Bates in The Seagull. Serious financial difficulties emerged in 2007, and in October 2008, Derby Playhouse Ltd. ceased operating after a period in administration. The company's last production at the theatre was The Killing of Sister George starring Jenny Eclair.
The theatre was reopened in October 2009 as the Derby Theatre under the ownership of the University of Derby. The first two productions were by the Derby Gilbert & Sullivan Company who performed The Gondoliers and The Mikado. The University of Derby originally operated the venue in partnership with Derby LIVE, the city council's performing arts programme with the theatre used for both visiting professional companies and as a learning and community theatre. This partnership came to end in March 2012 when responsibility for all areas of the operation were returned to the University who operate the theatre with the support of the Arts Council England. In May 2012 it was confirmed that Derby Theatre would receive £923,000 over three years from the Arts Council England to support a Learning Theatre Pilot programme. The University also offered financial support of up to £500,000 per year from its Arts fund.
The theatre launched a fundraising campaign to help with restoration costs, and the main auditorium seating and carpets were refurbished in August 2012 in time for the autumn season. The old Arts College and Metro Cinema building on Green Lane (an historic building owned by the University of Derby) was restored and adapted for the theatre's use with spaces for rehearsals, prop storage, and the wardrobe department. The rehearsal spaces were opened in December 2012 by the theatre's newly appointed Artistic Director, Sarah Brigham; General Manager, Gary Johnson; and Vice Chancellor of the University of Derby, John Coyne.
Read more about this topic: Derby Theatre
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)