Plans to turn the city’s leading theatre into a ‘people’s palace’
YEARS, DIANE PARKES TALKS TO ARTISTIC DIRECTOR FIONA ALLAN ABOUT ITS FUTURE
BIRMINGHAM Hippodrome this year celebrates its 120th birthday – and it has ambitious plans for 2019 and beyond. The focus of the year is ‘‘Then, now, always’’ so it is not just about looking backwards but very much about moving forwards into the future, says artistic director and chief executive Fiona Allan.
Having joined in October 2015 and developed the theatre’s festival strategy, youth programme and series of free activities in the theatre building, Fiona says it is now time to ensure the Hippodrome continues to develop for the next 120 years.
The theatre opened on October 9 in 1899 as The Tower of Varieties performing circus but was a resounding disaster, shutting its doors just weeks later. However the seed was sown and it reopened as the Tivoli a few months later, focussing on variety shows. By 1903 it was renamed the Hippodrome… and the rest is history.
Today the Hippodrome is one of the UK’s leading theatres, hosting top international musicals, dance, opera, theatre and comedy while attracting huge stars to its pantomime, the biggest outside London.
But, Fiona says, the team are certainly not sitting on their laurels and 2019 will see new shows, new developments and some big announcements.
“One hundred and twenty years of any cultural organisation existing seems almost miraculous. It’s something to remind ourselves of here in Birmingham and the region – what amazing assets we have,” Fiona says.
“But it’s not just about maintaining what we are doing well. It’s also looking at how the social landscape and city’s demographic is changing, and what we should be doing now to make sure our future is secure, independent and relevant.”
For Fiona, who joined the Hippodrome from Leicester’s Curve Theatre, it’s imperative the theatre extends its reach.
“The Hippodrome is best known for being an incredible auditorium which sells hundreds of thousands of tickets,” she says. “The evolution I’m now trying to make is almost back to the idea of a ‘people’s palace’ – where we look at how the Hippodrome can be relevant to everybody.
“Something I wanted to focus on from the beginning was how we open up the doors and encourage greater access to the Hippodrome so it’s not just used by the people who have bought a ticket to come and see a show in the evening.
“So how can we have more free performance here, more activities, make it more accessible, have a food and drink offer which people would come to during the day.”
This year will also see the theatre take huge strides forward in terms of encouraging new audiences to enjoy live performance – both in the theatre and in festivals across the region.
“There are two projects I’m personally very excited about because I’ve wanted to do them since I got here, so this birthday celebration is
a good year for it,” says Fiona.
“The first is The Color Purple in July which is a co-production with Leicester Curve so it’s our first co-production for the main stage. If you want to change the people who come to the theatre you need to change the stories you are telling on stage and the people performing on stage and this is doing just that.
“The second is our youth theatre production of West Side Story in August. The Hippodrome has never done a major community piece but now we have our own youth performance companies, schools projects and school holiday workshops we have a mass of young talent ready to create a main stage youth show.”
This summer sees the opening of Dance Hub in the Hippodrome building, above Birmingham Royal Ballet, which will be a world-class centre for dance.
“The Hippodrome is a campus which houses different organisations and offers a range of opportunities,” says Fiona. “The Dance Hub will be part of that. It’s a new extension of the building, with new dance studios and it will house a development agency called One
Dance UK, who are relocating from London to Birmingham.”
And the Hippodrome has been keen to foster different forms of dance – including launching and developing the hip-hop festival B-SIDE.
“We had our fourth B-SIDE festival this year. It was something I was really keen on starting when I came here because whilst we had a lot of hip-hop here before, it was always us importing artists from London.
“We’ve home-grown that festival and it has now become a significant one in Europe. People travel from across Europe and New
York for it. It’s a fantastic and growing festival and it turns the building and the locale over to an audience who aren’t here the rest of the year.”
The anniversary of the founding of the theatre will also be marked.
“We’ll have a birthday party in October – a big free open day,” says Fiona. “And we will have circus in the theatre, which is lovely as circus is what we opened with 120 years ago.”
Circus 1903 will have all the thrills and daredevil entertainment of a turn-of-the-century circus when it rolls into Hippodrome this October half term.
The show will include life-sized elephants created by puppeteers from War Horse, and a huge cast of jaw-dropping and dangerous acts from across the globe including acrobats, contortionists, trapeze and high wire performers.
The theatre has launched a new book, 120 Years of Birmingham Hippodrome in as many Short Tales, written by Hippodrome board member and Birmingham City University professor of English David Roberts.
“He has researched 120 little stories about the Hippodrome and each one of them he has told in 120 words! It’s a lovely, ‘dip-into’ book, which covers our heritage with snapshots of time through old programmes, stories of people who have performed on stage, lovely anecdotes, and archival pictures, and then it also brings things up to the modern day,” says Fiona.
Throughout 2019 the Hippodrome will also be announcing a series of other events and promotions.
“This birthday year is about how we broaden our reach, appeal to young people, take our brand outside the building and build the festivals offer for the city. That’s the trajectory we are on. We are a great theatre – but we are actually way more than a theatre.”