Significant Events: Near & Far - Touring & The SJT

This article was written for the Stephen Joseph Theatre's Circular newsletter and published in July 2021.

Near & Far - Touring & The SJT (1958 - 2021)

by Simon Murgatroyd

With the exciting news that all three of the summer 2021’s SJT productions are touring out, it seemed an appropriate time to celebrate our rich history of touring over the decades.

Touring has been an integral part of this company’s existence virtually since its creation in 1955 and has seen productions touring not only throughout the UK, but also to North America, Europe, even Australia!

The company’s founder, Stephen Joseph, began touring productions from Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre in 1958 for a very specific reason - he wanted to find a permanent home for the company. Scarborough was initially conceived as little more than a temporary base before a hoped for move to somewhere permanent.

So between 1958 and 1962, the company toured to towns and cities without municipal theatres - such as Newcastle-under-Lyme, Birmingham, Leicester, Hemel Hempstead, Hull, Southampton and Totnes - largely in the hope that one might be interested in giving the company a home in a purpose-built theatre-in-the-round.

Stephen nearly found success in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which did approve plans for a new theatre. When these collapsed though, Stephen decided to move the company to Stoke-on-Trent anyway, opening the Victoria Theatre - now known as the New Vic and where we continue to tour to to this day.

This led to the end of touring from Scarborough for more than a decade as most of the company’s money and grants had gone to Stoke, leaving Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre to struggle on for the rest of the decade with just a summer season.

When Alan Ayckbourn was appointed Artistic Director in 1972, he was keen the theatre not only become a year-round concern once again, but it also tour out. This began in 1974 with the world premiere of his play Confusions which toured out to Hull, Workington, Ulverstone, Kendal and Lincoln.

It was followed by a local weekly rep tour to Filey and Whitby which had an extraordinary schedule: at Filey Sun Lounge (Tuesdays), performances were in-the-round; at Whitby Pavilion (Wednesdays & Thursdays), it was in the end-stage; then back at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre (Fridays & Saturdays), it was performed three-sided in the old Lecture Room as the traditionally used Concert Room was unavailable!

A tour full of confusions indeed!

In 1976, the company crossed the channel for the first time when the British Council began to support the company’s touring programme. Alan’s play Just Between Ourselves and Stephen Mallatratt’s An Englishman’s Home toured to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

The European excursions continued between 1979 and 1980 visiting the likes of Brussels, Rotterdam, Arnheim, Amsterdam, Cologne, Luxembourg and Düsseldorf.

By the early 1980s, Alan was also becoming increasingly disenfranchised by the West End and sought a means to bypass it by taking his Scarborough productions directly into London, first to The Round House (1980 - 81) and, later, Greenwich Theatre (1984). Sadly, this was a short-lived and unsuccessful venture which was ill-received by critics.

Despite this setback, the company excelled in 1982 when it toured to the Alley Theatre, Houston. Of course, when touring across the Atlantic for the first time, the sensible option would have been to take a simple, small production out. So, obviously, Alan toured his extraordinarily ambitious play Way Upstream for a month… And it was a huge success complete with flooded stage, rain storms and a ‘floating’, moving cabin cruiser!

This ambitious approach was repeated in 1987 when the company toured not only the UK but extensively across Canada with Alan’s play Time & Time Again. The following year, Henceforward… went out to Europe and then kept going, taking in Istanbul, Ankara, Alexandria and Cairo. As an Archivist, I find it delightful to imagine a Scarborough company performing Ayckbourn plays in the capital of Egypt!

With the onset of the ‘90s, attention was largely focused on the development of Scarborough’s former Odeon cinema into a new home for the company, but in 1992 a new tradition began with the first tour to the newly built Old Laundry Theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere.

Interesting fact, this was founded and designed by Alan Ayckbourn’s frequent designer Roger Glossop and is practically a carbon-copy of the layout of our former home at Westwood. It was conceived with the idea that Alan would regularly transfer his productions there - which the SJT continues to do to this day.

The SJT opened in 1996, but touring from the new - finally permanent! - home of the company did not really gather pace until 1999 when Haunting Julia set the template for extensive UK end-stage tours as well as a regular in-the-round circuit comprising of the Old Laundry, the New Vic and Bolton Octagon.

During the ‘00s, smaller scale tours of regional rural venues also found success presenting the SJT’s lunchtime programme of new works by up and coming writers.

On the other end of the scale, an ambitious team-up with the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in 2004 saw Alan direct a production of Season’s Greetings specifically for larger end-stage theatres, starring Liza Goddard and Matthew Kelly. It was hoped this would become a regular tour circuit, but sadly never progressed past the first year and, due to its scale, it was never seen at the SJT.

More successful was a financially risky decision to tour Alan’s play Private Fears in Public Places to New York as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival at the 59E59 Theatres.

It was more than worth the risk though as the play was critically acclaimed and broke box office records - there were even ticket touts apparently as it was such a hot ticket! This began a strong relationship which has subsequently seen the SJT regularly tour to the 59E59 Theatres; it is a relationship both the SJT and Alan Ayckbourn have always been very proud of.

The high point of this period arguably came in 2011 when Alan’s play Neighbourhood Watch began a tour in New York, before returning to the UK and climaxing in a month-long residency at the Tricycle Theatre, London. Scarborough, New York, London - not bad!

But this was a high point in a slow decline which saw little other reinvention or innovation with regard to touring. The rural tours ended in 2010 due to funding cuts and the end-stage circuit consistently became smaller - both in venues and geographical scale - culminating in just a handful of venues in 2017. The nadir was, arguably, a poorly received tour of former Artistic Director Chris Monks’ swansong Cox & Box during 2015.

This company’s founder, Stephen Joseph, argued theatres should be blown up every 10 years: in essence, they should re-invent themselves to stay fresh. With the appointment of Paul Robinson as Artistic Director in 2017 came a much-needed re-evaluation and fresh approach to touring.

The aim was to tour more of the SJT’s repertory out and with more focus. This launched with Goth Weekend and The 39 Steps but took off - pardon the pun - with Build a Rocket by Scarborough playwright Chris York, which went where the SJT had never gone before.

It was the first production to tour to festivals taking in both Latitude and - notably - the Edinburgh Festival, where it won the Holden Street Theatre's Edinburgh Fringe Award leading to it tour to Adelaide in Australia! An extraordinary achievement which was followed by the most extensive UK tour ever organised by the company.

And that, pretty much, brings us to the present day and, going forward, a renewed emphasis on touring and co-productions which will see the majority of the SJT’s programme going out on tour, taking our plays out across the country.

This year will see The Girl Next Door, Home, I’m Darling and The Offing all touring - even during these most challenging of circumstances for theatres.

Hopefully, they will pave the way for even more exciting and extensive ventures and tours from the SJT in the year to come.

Article by and copyright of Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.