Blog: Out of the Archive (but any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental…)

Greg Mosse, Young Playwrights, New Writing South, Archive, Devised drama
Greg Mosse works with our Young Playwrights on “Out of the Archive”

The Pass It On project is a real voyage of discovery, not just in terms of the history of the Festival Theatre, but also the opportunities it presents to bring the worlds of heritage and theatre together. Now in the second of our three years, we are being experimental and exploring how the objects we uncover in our archive can be used to inspire new creative work.

We are embarking on an exciting project called Out Of the Archive, which draws on several areas of the Festival Theatre’s activity. A group of early-career play writes, alumni of the New Writing South and Chichester Festival Theatre’s Young Playwrights scheme, are currently developing a short series of 20 minute plays inspired by our archive.

Continue reading “Out of the Archive (but any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental…)”

Blog: “A White Concrete Mushroom”

Miracle Theatre, Leslie Evershed Martin, Chichester Festival Theatre, Book
‘The Miracle Theatre’
Available for purchase from Chichester Festival Theatre (click on picture to follow link)

Writing in 1986, Leslie Evershed-Martin reflected on the Festival Theatre Building; the strengths and weaknesses of its design and the reactions and perceptions people held about it. The below extract comes from his book The Miracle Theatre (1986:p33).

‘Over the years there have been many amusing descriptions applied to the look of the building. Correspondents have vied with one another in their inventiveness and the following are some of the examples:-

– “An enormous home plate in a tight little ball pitch.”

– “A merry-go-round outside and a circus inside.”

– “The roof is like an inverted radio telescope.”

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Blog: Joining the Team

Heritage Activities, Pass It On, Chichester Festival Theatre
Becky Rae, the new Heritage Activities Trainee

Sadly, this week sees the lovely Rachel leaving her role as Heritage Activities Trainee. Three trainees will be hired across the span of the project; I’m extremely happy to introduce myself as the second.

Although I know I have very big shoes to fill, I’m so excited to be joining the Pass It On team and look forward to working with our fantastic volunteers on a range of projects.

Having lived in Chichester for nearly two decades, I have very happy memories of the Festival Theatre and have even performed in the Minerva. This was for the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival in 2004 (we summarised The Taming Of The Shrew in twenty minutes – I had the pleasure of performing ‘character parts’). Continue reading “Joining the Team”

Blog: Meet the Pass It On Project Evaluators

Pass It On, PACSO, Arts Events
Members of the community with the Pass It On team and PACSO partners at one of our events in 2013.

Susan Potter, Sonia Rasbery and Louise Pack are our external evaluators for the Pass It On project. They have worked on the evaluation of a range of high profile arts projects including Outside In – originally based at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery – that is now being developed nationwide.

Susan Potter, Project Evaluator, talks about their role within the project:

Over the upcoming months, we three will be interviewing, filming, asking you to complete participant questionnaires and requesting feedback about the Pass It On project. Then we’ll analyse all of the data, ready to produce a short film and full written report. But why are we doing all of this you may be asking? So just before we begin, we thought we’d take a moment or two to explain why!

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