Manchester

Manchester. The first permanent theatre in the city was erected in 1758 and from 1760 to 1775 was used regularly by a company on its way from Leeds to Worcester. It closed when a new theatre was built at the junction of York Street and Spring Gardens, being finally demolished in 1869. The new building, with a royal patent, opened as the Theatre Royal in 1775. Among the well-known players who appeared there were John Philip Kemble, who at 19 was seen as Othello to the Desdemona of his elder sister Mrs Siddons, and Mrs Elizabeth Inchbald. The building was burned down in 1789, but rebuilt and reopened in 1790. It proved too small for the new mass audiences and in 1807 was replaced by a much larger theatre, which soon ruined its first manager, the father of William Macready. It too was destroyed by fire, in 1844, and the last Theatre Royal to be built in Manchester, in Peter Street, opened in 1845, became a cinema in 1929, was then used for bingo, and is now a discothèque. In 1891 the Palace Theatre was erected for the use of touring companies, and in 1908 the Gaiety Theatre, a former music-hall, was opened as the first repertory theatre in Britain by Miss Horniman. The dramatists connected with this theatre, including Harold Brighouse and Stanley Houghton, were known as the Manchester School of Drama, the chief characteristic of which was its realism; their works formed part of the ‘new drama’ which came into prominence shortly before the First World War. The theatre closed in 1917. The Opera House was built in 1912, and the Library Theatre has had its own company since 1952. A university theatre, directly connected with the Manchester University Department of Drama, opened under Hugh Hunt in 1966, and for some years housed the 69 Theatre Company, now the Royal Exchange Theatre Company. Since 1973 the university theatre has housed the Contact Theatre Company, a professional company founded by Hugh Hunt, which also visits schools and youth clubs and runs educational drama workshops. The theatre is used for part of the year by amateur groups from the university. It has an adaptable auditorium seating between 250 and 350.