The Stephen Joseph Theatre is a theatre in the round in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England that was founded by Stephen Joseph and was the first theatre in the round in Britain.
In 1955, Joseph established a tiny theatre in the round on the first floor of the Public Library.
The theatre flourished and in 1976 moved to a supposedly temporary home on the ground floor of the former Scarborough Boys' High School.
However, a permanent home proved difficult to find and it was not until late 1988 and the closure of the local Odeon cinema by Rank Leisure that the theatre's long-standing Artistic Director, Alan Ayckbourn, found a suitable venue.
The new theatre, known simply as the Stephen Joseph Theatre, opened in 1996 and comprises two auditoria: The Round, a 404-seat in the round and The McCarthy, a 165-seat endstage/cinema. The building also contains a restaurant, shop, and full front-of-house and backstage facilities.
The Round boasts two important technical innovations: the stage lift, facilitating speedy set changes and the trampoline, a Canadian invention which allows technicians particularly easy access to the lighting grid.
It is also the place where Richard Hawley's Coles Corner album cover was taken.
Famous quotes containing the word theatre:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)