A perfect stage for top talent
IF there is a place that most accurately reflects the cultural and social rebirth of Newcastle over the past 30 or so years, that place is Live Theatre.
Of course, the Angel of the North means so much to so many, symbolising both the region’s strength and its beauty, and Gateshead’s Sage is recognised the world over (even if it was snootily referred to by a lazy columnist as ‘the slug.’)
Nothing offers natives or visitors the perfect blend of North East raw talent and polished expression Live does, nor the working-class storytelling of both its most successful productions and its brilliant outreach programme in local schools.
Located in a Grade II listed former grain warehouse just off the Quayside, the theatre also reflects a city’s growing confidence, which cheers the soul.
Where once there was waste ground and rats (literally), now there are gleaming offices, intelligent start-ups and good bars – as well as the theatre’s own marvellous gastro pub, The Broad Chare.
Despite this progress outside though, it has always been inside where the magic has happened.
To put it mildly, the company has been a hit factory.
From CP Taylor’s And a Nightingale Sang and Close The Coalhouse Door by Alan Plater, all the way through to Lee Hall’s Broadway storming The Pitman Painters and my favourite, Paddy Campbell’s utter brilliant debut Wet House, Live has championed North East voices, creatives and the most thoughtful storytelling to an eclectic and understandably demanding audience.
Demanding because they have been spoiled with such brilliance, mostly at the hand of recently retired artistic director Max Roberts.
Then there is the smell. I first came to Live Theatre in the late ‘80s, hanging on the coat tails of my extended family while the bar thronged with electricity after another successful night’s work.
Magically, the theatre still smells like it did then – but with a touch less cigarette smoke!
It was/is an amazing scent of industry that I guess has soaked into the original brickwork – of work, musty old-fashioned energy and of a building’s soul.
It is a fitting aroma for a fiercely independent theatre in a workingclass city and is a smell I love.
My family connection with the theatre has been pretty constant through my life.
From my Granda Sid’s short stories forming the basis of Close the Coalhouse Door, to some of my dad Michael’s best works – his adaptation of Sid’s short stories In Blackberry Time, his dramatisation of the best-selling diaries of Chris Mullin MP in A Walk On Part and what he calls his play with music, an ode to the river outside, the beautiful Tyne – Live has always been there.
I have had the pleasure of writing for its stage twice in a previous life as a freelance writer.
Once simply as a curator of young people’s own words for the brilliant From Home to Newcastle, where members of the youth theatre explored what their home city (born or adopted) meant to them. Their words went beyond their years and showed what Paul James’ inspiring outreach programme could achieve.
Then there was You Couldn’t Make it Up and its sequel You Really Couldn’t Make It Up, written in partnership with my dad – where people who do not go to the theatre (their words not mine) came to the theatre.
They were football fans keen on hearing about Mike Ashley’s disastrous ownership of Newcastle United during the 2008-09 season through a script in hand, fly-on-thewall piece.
One night, a man was so enraged by the injustice of it all he took his season ticket out of his wallet and threw it on to the stage. Only Live could do that.
I only mention my small contribution to the theatre’s back catalogue to emphasise the sheer scale and variety of its output. It was my pleasure.
Another great pleasure has been watching on as the theatre’s management brilliantly future-proofed the company.
Money is tight in theatreland, even more so in regional theatre where there is always a wolf at the door.
Following the theatre’s beautiful redevelopment in 2007 (the view of the Tyne Bridge from the upper stairwell is one of the most perfect and unexpected in the city) and the credit crunch a year later, chief executive Jim Beirne set about reimagining how a leading new writing theatre in North East England could possibly serve the creative community and their audience in the next 40 years as well as it had in the previous 40 – but in a world without much arts funding and precious few rich benefactors.
The result was an ambitious development of prime Quayside land and property and a theatre as landlord was born.
The 14,000sqft of new office space that now houses another North East success story ZeroLight, a public park and space for a children and young people’s writing centre.
Even the most ingenuous financial planning cannot easily protect a business from this year’s challenge and so this Passionate People, Passionate Places piece is to end with a plea.
If you can, please support Live Theatre when all of this is over.