Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre
| GPOAT | |
| Address |
Grosvenor Park Chester United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 53°11′23.9″N 2°52′55.7″W / 53.189972°N 2.882139°W |
| Operator | Storyhouse |
| Type | Open air |
| Capacity | 500 |
| Current use | Summer repertory |
| Website | |
| Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre | |
Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre, located in Chester, UK, is a purpose-built venue with an eight-week annual summer repertory season. Founded in 2010 by local arts producer Storyhouse, it is the only full-time, site-specific professional open-air theatre company outside London. The company produces all its work in-house under its Artistic Director, Alex Clifton.
The open-air theatre was designed by the company is built each summer in Grosvenor Park, a public park in Chester. Performances are staged 'in the round', with the audience seated on all sides of a central stage. In 2011 the theatre switched from a traditional built stage to a more Shakespearean 'thrust' stage, made from woodchip. Covered seating to around 40% of terraces was introduced in 2012. In 2015, the original horseshoe shape was replaced by full 'in the round' seating.
As at 2016, the theatre stages three productions per season, often two Shakespeare plays and an additional, specially commissioned work. This has included work by Helen Eastman, Jessica Swale and most prominently Glyn Maxwell.
Directors have included Nikolai Foster (director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse),Robin Norton-Hale and Alex Clifton who has been the theatre's Artistic Director since 2010.
Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre also invites a company of 16- to 24-year-olds to stage an original one-act play which is written, produced and performed by members of the company.
Other projects undertaken by Storyhouse include the Chester Music Festival, the Chester Literature Festival, outdoor cinema season Moonlight Flicks and the young person’s literature festival WayWord. The company is opening a new £37m combined arts centre, theatre and library, under the Storyhouse brand, in Spring 2017.
2016
2015
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2012
2011
2010
Alfred Hickling, writing in The Guardian in 2013, states In four years, Chester's Grosvenor Park theatre has grown from a spartan bank of seating into a perfect wooden O with audience cover, an expanded repertoire and upgraded picnic facilities.The Stage describes the 2013 production of Cyrano de Bergerac as what good alfresco summer theatre is all about.
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