Dundee Rep

Dundee Repertory Theatre or Dundee Rep is a theatre and arts company in the city of Dundee, Scotland. It operates as both a producing house - staging at least six of its own productions each year, and a receiving house - hosting work from visiting companies throughout Scotland and the United Kingdom including drama, musicals, contemporary & classical dance, children’s theatre, comedy, jazz and opera. It is home to the Dundee Rep Ensemble, Scotland’s only full-time company of actors, as well as Scotland’s principal contemporary dance company, Scottish Dance Theatre. ‘’’The Rep’’’ building is located in Tay Square at the centre of the city’s "cultural quarter" in the West End.

Recognised to be among the top regional theatres in the UK, it plays to an average audience of over 70,000 people a year attracting a very broad cross-section of the local population in terms of age and occupation.

Dundee has had a number of purpose built theatres. Apart from early wooden theatres, the Theatre Royal in Castle Street opened in 1810 and became firmly established from the 1840s until 1885 when the new Her Majesty’s Theatre and Opera House opened on the Seagate. Others included the Alhambra - renamed the Whitehall in the 1970s - the Palace, renamed the Theatre Royal in the 1960s, and the King's Theatre in the Cowgate which opened in 1908. By around 1920 many theatres had converted into cinemas, and for most of the 1930s Dundee no longer had a designated drama theatre. Robert Thornely – Manager of the last touring company to perform in Dundee was determined to find a home in the city for his professional theatre company. He approached the Dundee Dramatic Society, an amateur company, who, also faced with nowhere to perform had recently purchased their own premises in the form of a disused jute mill. In May 1939 Dundee Repertory Theatre was founded as a collaboration between professionals with amateur support. Around this time people thought it strange to be concentrating on drama during the turmoil of World War II. However the company performed weekly repertory during the war and the rest of the 1940s and throughout the 1950s. The company was housed in Foresters' Hall (6 Nicoll street to 3 Rattray Street) which was built for the Ancient Order of Foresters in 1901, when in June 1963 a fire completely destroyed the building and the Rep was forced to live a nomadic existence for a short period. Eventually a temporary refuge was found in the converted former Dudhope Church on the Lochee Road of Dundee although the company remained at the venue for a further 18 years.

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