The Royal Theatrical Support Trust (RTST) and ETT (English Touring Theatre) were delighted to announce that the 2021 RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award Scheme was open for another year in October 2021.

In its fifth year, the award – which honours the memory of RTST co-founder, Sir Peter Hall – offers the winner their first-time opportunity to direct a full-scale, fully funded, mid-scale regional touring production of a classic or modern play, which may be an existing play or a new adaptation of a novel or film. The production will open in 2022 at Leeds Playhouse, as a co-production between ETT and Leeds Playhouse, then tour across the UK. The RTST will make a grant of £50,000 to be applied towards the costs of the winner’s production.

The scheme promotes the RTST’s charitable objectives by supporting up-and-coming theatre practitioners and British regional theatres. It is also intended to appeal to a wide range of candidates and to play a part in promoting diversity in the theatre, onstage, offstage and among audiences.

The winning director will demonstrate exceptional directing skills and a passion for regional theatre, and will be chosen by a panel comprising of Chair, Richard Twyman; Artistic Director of ETT; James Brining, Artistic Director of Leeds Playhouse; Dominic Cooke, Director; Paapa Essiedu, Actor; Haydn Gwynne, Actor; Shelley Maxwell, Movement Director; and Davina Shah, Literary and Creative Agent.

The 2019 RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award winner Anthony Almeida opens his production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Curve, Leicester on 8 September, with previews from 3 September, before touring to Liverpool, Canterbury, Ipswich, Theatr Clwyd, and concludes in Southampton on 30 October. Other previous award winners and official runners-up of the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award include Nancy Medina and Josh Seymour (2018); Chelsea Walker and Tinuke Craig (2017); and Kate Hewitt and Rebecca Frecknall (2016).

Sir Geoffrey Cass, Chairman, and Mark Hawes, Director of the RTST said today, “After a year’s hiatus, we’re overjoyed to be running our RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award scheme once more —this year with ETT, which is set to co-produce the winner’s production with Leeds Playhouse. This will be the fourth regional mid-scale touring co-production (and the fifth regional production in total) to be catalysed by our RTST Award and production grant — again providing a career-transformative experience for the winning director, work for multiple theatre practitioners, and high-quality drama for audiences around the country. In a regional industry recovering from the desolating effects of the pandemic, this RTST Award stands for opportunity, excellence and hope.”

Richard Twyman, Artistic Director, and Sophie Scull, Executive Producer of ETT, also commented, “This is ETT’s fourth year partnering with the RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award and it represents one of the most important things we do as company; opening up the stages of cities and towns throughout the UK to artists that haven’t had the chance to work on them before. The opportunity to make work on a larger scale that tours to audiences nationwide, in a fully resourced and supported production, can be a watershed moment in a director’s career and feels all the more significant after the last 18 months.

We’re ever grateful to the RTST for their continued commitment to raising significant funding for new talent and delighted, this year, to be partnering with Leeds Playhouse to co-produce the production. We look forward to introducing the work of a visionary director to audiences across the UK in Autumn 2022.”

James Brining, Artistic Director of Leeds Playhouse, added, “We’re delighted to be working with RTST and English Touring Theatre to support up-and-coming theatre practitioners to develop the scale and ambition of their work. Supporting theatre practitioners at all stages of their career is a key part of the Leeds Playhouse mission. As part of our pioneering Furnace artistic development programme, we work year-round to develop audacious creative voices and vital new theatre for the stage.

The step from small to middle scale presents particular challenges. This award has a terrific reputation for enabling visionary directors to make that step with confidence, knowing they have the support of an established producing theatre. We can’t wait to meet the selected candidates and to work on realising the production in the autumn of 2022.”

For further details of the award, please visit the RTST’s website: www.rtst.org.uk.

The closing date for entries has now passed.

To celebrate the arrival of Trailer Story, Theatre by the Lake and English Touring Theatre have been taking a deep dive back into their shared history: Century Theatre and the Blue Box.

Let’s start from the beginning.

In 1948 John Ridley caught Wilfred Harrison after he finished a performance at Hinckley Working Men’s Club and shared with him his sketches for a mobile theatre. As an actor in a small company, playing one-nighters in eclectic halls across the country, Wilfred was captivated by the concept, and boldly took up the challenge to raise funds for it.

Taking a huge leap of faith in those dark days after the war, they set about creating the unique steel and aluminium structure, in which four huge trailers fold together to form a complete 225 seat proscenium theatre. John was joined by coach builder Dick Bull and electrical engineer Norman Robinson, and after four years of hard work (and many pots of blue paint) Century Theatre was finally ready to hit the road.

Century toured the country with a convoy of trailers, all towed by three enormous ex-service trucks (often driven by actors, no HGV licence being required then). Packed into the trailers was the performance space, a box office, dressing rooms, and accommodation for a company of sixteen – kitchen, dining room, bathrooms, and individual bedrooms, some 25 trailers in all.

Imagine deconstructing a theatre, an office, and a B&B and you’ll have some idea of what they managed to pack together!

In 1975, during one of Century Theatre’s many summers in Keswick, the braking systems on the main trailers couldn’t meet the new road traffic regulations, which meant that what had now been dubbed the ‘Blue Box’, ended up staying put, remaining in Keswick until 1996.

Eventually there was a successful campaign for a permanent replacement to be built in Keswick: Theatre by the Lake was founded, and Century Theatre moved on to Coalville where you can still visit it today.

As well as their space in Coalville, Century Theatre continued to have a touring arm to its work. In 1992 Stephen Unwin took over the touring arm and re-launched it as English Touring Theatre.

So three companies evolved from those trailers and trucks!

It’s been 60 years since the Century Theatre’s first summer in Keswick. To celebrate, we got back in touch with some of those who worked there.

Photographer Chris Arthur recalled the journey to Keswick for that first season 1961:

The move from Preston to prepare its first Keswick season in 1961 was going to be the longest one ever attempted for the Century Theatre. Whilst this took place our acting company were sent ‘on tour’ to the Everyman Theatre at Cheltenham.

 I was introduced to a number of the Century’s essential driver ‘Volunteers’ who’d been recruited to help with this epic move, among them was Bob Pratt, and it was my first meeting with Hilary Young who, it being a Sunday, had a day off from his summer season job in stage management Blackpool Opera House

 In preparation for the big move John Ridley took some of the drivers on an advance recce to plan the route in his car. I was ‘mating’ for Hilary, but he had been working elsewhere and consequently had been unable to participate in that exercise.

 As a mate, and on the narrower, hazard strewn and more convoluted roads one would spend a fair amount of time hanging out standing on the running board on the nearside of the drivers cab in order to be able to see what was happening with the last of our two trailers which were often hidden from the driver’s sight by the sheer bulk of a main theatre trailer.

 Large, very long and slow moving we’d inevitably be accompanied by a long tail of frustrated motorists who found themselves trapped behind us.

On reaching Kendal Hilary wasn’t able to remember exactly which turn we were meant to take and as it wasn’t somewhere we could easily hang around when we came to a sign showing a turn off to the left which said ‘To The Lakes’, we took it.

This road went up and up and getting ever narrower and narrower, with dry stone walls closing in on either side. Eventually we arrived at a place where 50 feet ahead it reached a horizon line with just blue sky above. We stopped, I got out and walked ahead of our truck which rapidly disappeared from my view as the road plunged downwards toward a valley. We had no option but to go for it, which we did successfully. However, as I hung off the near side of the tractor I rather damaged the seat of my jeans as my bottom repeatedly skidded against the dry stone walls.

One of the last challenges for our drivers on this run was the very tight 90 degree right turn beside Keswick Post Office, which on the date we arrived was being controlled by Paddy, a particularly animated and slightly eccentric policeman, who almost had a heart attack when he saw the size of our wagon trains. As Hilary has subsequently reminded me “Turning right by Keswick Post Office we knocked the T off a shop sign thereby re-naming it the ‘rustee Savings Bank’.

Hilary Young, Former Manager of Century Theatre, reminisced about those long summers in Keswick:

I like to think that one of the high points in the life of Century was the 2^nd summer season in Keswick in 1962.  I had come back into the fold as manager and the hugely energetic Ian Curteis directed a season of plays that we would drool over these days. The first line of Ben Johnson’s THE ALCHEMIST set the season going “I fart at thee”. It was followed by PEER GYNT, DEATH OF A SALESMAN, THE ENTERTAINER, PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, Moliere’s THE MISANTHROPE and a new American play.  

That summer we were welcomed back into Keswick by Lindsay Temple whose enthusiastic support was to become so important in later years when he kept Century afloat in difficult times.  

The Council too welcomed us back and instead of the old tip [now Crow Park] we were sited in the middle of town on what is now part of the Central Car park. They also allowed us to put up a small ticket booth at the bottom of the market square. Rushing to open it one morning armed with the new posters, a brush and pan of paste and with a patient queue of customers waiting, I realised that I hadn’t brought the key so I nipped into Temple’s haberdashery shop and surprised Lindsay with a request for a carving knife – to slip the Yale lock.

He also touched on some of the less glamourous parts of managing the mobile company

 The Theatre had a trailer with Ladies and Gents chemical loos for the public which I found that fastidious actors used to avoid defiling their own living van closet.   And the one chore that the company never shared in my days as Manager was emptying them.   It always fell to me.

There’d be an Emergency call – THE LOOS ARE FULL – just before audience arrived and I’d be emptying them dressed in my dinner jacket – down the nearest sewer cover.