Theatre Development - Planned Extension
Ever since CoPs bought our Little Theatre in 1972, the Company has strived to develop it’s facilities to support the best possible experience of producing and watching great theatre. The initial conversion from Victorian schoolroom to theatre created the basics of a stage, dressing room, toilets and auditorium – over time, adjustments were made as funds allowed, with improvements becoming more major in later years, starting with the foyer construction in 1998.
To find out more information on the history of the Company and the Theatre as it progressed from a private members’ club to the publicly-accessible community amateur theatre company it is today, click the button.
This gradual evolution created some shortcomings, and several areas of our more than 150-year-old building have not changed at all since that first conversion. So in 2019 it was time for a major review of the building and its facilities as a whole. Working with local architect Andrew Goodman, we sought solutions for many of these shortcomings, as well as updating our outdated facilities and improving comfort and access, to create an environment fit for purpose in the present day and into the future. The main priorities we identified were:
Until 1998, the entrance to the theatre opened straight onto the stairs to the auditorium, so the building of the current foyer was a great improvement. However, it’s never been large enough to fit in the whole audience at once, and it is too small to be an effective rehearsal space – when rehearsal schedules overlap this can create a need for expensive external venue hire.
None of our current toilets meet the needs of disabled users, and our two front-of-house toilets are only accessible via the auditorium, so they can’t be used by audience members arriving before the house is open. If the foyer is being used for meetings while rehearsals are taking place on stage, it means leaving the building and re-entering from backstage to avoid disturbing rehearsals. Only having two toilets for an audience of over 60 people makes for lengthy queues in the interval too!
The auditorium itself is currently the only link between the foyer and backstage areas. This means that, to make an entrance from the back of the audience, actors have to dash around the outside of the building, no matter the weather! A wardrobe person’s nightmare and the cause of many shivering actors over the years.
The current backstage area consists of a single communal dressing room, a kitchen, and an open multi-purpose green room/workspace area that also provides access to one side of the stage, the backstage toilet and the lower auditorium. There is no private space for our junior performers and no disabled toilet. When a play needs a large cast (our record to date is 19!) or the upstage doors are being used for moving large items of furniture on and off (requiring a raised platform in the dressing room), the green room also has to provide dressing space – all in all, it can get quite cramped! At the other end of the auditorium, the only way to get into the lighting and sound control box is via a ladder accessed from the outside of the building – not for the faint-hearted or less agile.
Other areas long overdue for work are proper heating and ventilation in the auditorium and upgrading stage lighting to LED, both of which reduce our carbon footprint as well as improving the comfort of our audiences.
Plans and Progress
Detailed plans were developed to meet all of these priorities within “a single storey extension to provide an enlarged foyer, new and improved sanitary accommodation, additional backstage facilities and improved access and facilities for disabled persons”.
These plans will give us:
- A bigger, more comfortable foyer
- Internal stairs to our technical control room
- Disabled access and toilet facilities
- Front-of-House toilets
- Internal access from backstage to front-of-house and both sides of the stage
- Additional dressing room space
Planning permission was granted in November 2022. All the planning materials, including the application and related documents are still available to view on the Council’s website via the link below:
We are now working on raising the substantial funds needed to bring these plans to life, currently estimated at £360k, through a combination of grants and personal giving from our membership and beyond. Match funding for grants is usually 20% and we are already nearly halfway to the direct fundraising target of £80k, so with your help we feel sure this is achievable. To find out more about how you can join us on this exciting new stage of our journey, visit our Donate to CoPs page via the link below. Your support will give a new lease of life to the Little Theatre you all love, so you can continue to enjoy our shows in comfort for years to come.
We’ll keep this page updated as our plans progress. If you have any comments, questions, concerns or want to get more involved, please email us at info@cops.org.uk or speak to any of our committee members. You can find answers to queries that others have already raised on our FAQs page.