Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
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The theatre is based in the Manchester Royal Exchange, a large Victorian building used until 1968 for cotton trading.
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Programme
The Royal Exchange gives an average of 350 performances a year of nine professional theatre productions. These productions are occasionally transferred to London, or toured in a 400 seat mobile theatre.
The company performs a varied programme including classic theatre and revivals, contemporary drama, and original new writing.
In addition to its own productions the Royal Exchange also presents visiting theatre companies in The Studio; folk, jazz and rock concerts; and discussions, readings and literary events.
The largest theatre in the round in Britain (seating capacity 700+) it was founded to present a programme of classical and contemporary work. Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov have been the mainstay of its repertoire but the theatre has also staged important classics from other areas of the canon including the British premieres of La Ronde and The Prince Of Homburg and important revivals of The Lower Depths, Don Carlos and the Dybbuk. American work has also been important - Tennessee Williams, O'Neill, Miller - as has new writing, with the world premieres of The Dresser, Amongst Barbarians, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow and Port to its name.
Over the years the Exchange has attracted a high calibre of actor to its stage from Albert Finney, Leo McKern and Tom Courtenay in the early days through successive generations including Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren and Robert Lindsay to figures such as Janet McTeer and Amanda Donohoe. It has also had a reputation for spotting young actors before they became megastars. Kate Winslett and Hugh Grant both appeared at the Royal Exchange long before they made it on film.
The Exchange has also had a knack of spotting directorial and design talent before they went onto greater things. Adrian Noble, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd, Iain McDiarmid, Robert Delamare, Matthew Lloyd and Marrianne Elliott all directed at the Exchange as associate or artistic directors at some stage and designers such as Mark Thomas, Rae Smith and Lez Brotherston have all done important work there.
Performance spaces
The Royal Exchange Theatre has two performance spaces:
The Theatre
This is a seven sided steel and glass module that squats within the Great Hall of the Manchester Royal Exchange. It a pure theatre in the round in which the stage area is surrounded on all sides and above by seating.
The theatre can seat up to 700 people on three levels. There are 400 seats at ground level in a raked configuration, above which lie two galleries, each with 150 seats set in two rows.
As the floor of the Exchange would not be able to take the great weight of the theatre and its audience, the module is suspended from four massive columns that also carry the hall's central dome. Only the stage area and ground level seating rest on the floor of the hall itself.
The theatre's unique design was conceived by Richard Negri of Wimbledon School of Art, and was intended to create an unusually vivid and immediate relationship between actors and audiences.
The Studio
This is a 100 seat studio theatre of flexible configuration. This space acts as host to a programme of visiting touring theatre companies and performances for young people.
History
Foundation
The Royal Exchange Theatre was founded in 1976 in the old Corn Exchange in Manchester by a group of artistic directors - Michael Elliott, Caspar Wrede, Richard Negri, James Maxwell and Braham Murray - a group whose origins lay in the 59 and later 69 Theatre companies whose work had had such an impact first in London and then Manchester. In 1979 the artistic directorship was augmented by the appointment of Gregory Hersov who remains, along with Braham Murray, the last surviving member of the original group.
The IRA bomb and its aftermath
On 15 June 1996 the IRA detonated a massive bomb in Manchester city centre, 50 metres from the exchange. Damage to the building was extensive, making performances impossible.
Repairs took over two years to complete and cost £32 million, a sum provided by the National Lottery. Whilst its home was being rebuilt the company performed in its mobile theatre, which was set up in an indoor market building in nearby Castlefield.
As well as repairing the theatre the rebuilding programme also added a second performance space, The Studio, as well as a bookshop, craft shop, restaurant, bars, and rooms for corporate hospitality. The theatre's workshops, costume department and rehearsal rooms were moved to a second site on Swan Street.
The refurbished theatre was re-opened on 30 November 1998 by Prince Edward. The opening production was Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes, the play which was being presented when the bomb went off.
In 1999 the Royal Exchange was awarded the title of Theatre of the Year in the Barclays Theatre Awards, in recognition of its successful refurbishment and ambitious re-opening season.
External links
- The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester (http://www.royalexchange.co.uk/)
Bibliography
- The Biggest Room in the World: A Short History of the Royal Exchange. RDH Scott. 1976. Royal Exchange Theatre Trust. ISBN 0859720330