Stephen Joseph Theatre

 

Stephen Joseph Theatre


Designed by Harry W Weedon and originally completed in 1936, this Grade-II* listed, 1,700 seat cinema lay unoccupied for several years until it was purchased in 1988. Completed in 1996, we oversaw its £4m conversion into a theatre with rehearsal space and associated administration and storage facilities.

When established by Stephen Joseph in 1955, his company was Britain’s first ‘theatre in the round’. However, a permanent home proved difficult to find and it was not until late 1988 and the closure of Scarborough’s Odeon cinema that the theatre's long-standing Artistic Director, Alan Ayckbourn, found a suitable venue.

The new theatre, known simply as the Stephen Joseph Theatre, opened in 1996 and comprises two auditoria: The Round, a 404-seat theatre in the round, and The McCarthy, a 165-seat end-on stage/cinema. The building also contains a restaurant, shop, and full front-of-house and backstage facilities.

The Round boasts two important technical innovations: the stage lift, facilitating speedy set changes, and the trampoline, a Canadian invention which allows technicians particularly easy access to the lighting grid.

We developed the structural scheme design which was subsequently adopted by the Design and Build Contractor.

Client: The ADMirable Partnership