Day Two - Echoes

As well as silence there's an emptiness about the theatre - its a building just waiting for an audience and that moment when someone steps out onto the stage. The dressing rooms are eerily empty.

While the theatre is waiting for the next performance the leavings of the previous one remain.

A jacket, a cue sheet and a few sparkles remaining from the last show which was a pantomime (The Adventures of Sinbad)...all that's left of such a colourful noisy involving event. I'm really glad I went to see it - the theatre was so different. Full of action and interaction, light and sound. I loved the way they used the space - the actors are right in the audience because we are all very close to the stage. The seating wraps round it so some of the audience are right at the actors' eye level and it becomes almost a conversation. The acoustics are great and they make you very aware of the physical presence of the actors, not just their voices but the sound of their footsteps on stage...it was so impressive when the whole place was transformed into a ship at sea using painted canvas at the sides. With a quick flourish of ropes, it was unrolled and suddenly, there we were. My first experience of theatre that I can remember was here in 1979.  I had the chance to look through some of the wonderful scrapbooks and collections of playbills in the archive and there it was - 'Beauty and the Beast'; opening night 24 December 1979.