The Children’s Theatre Project
To give you a summary of this project, here’s an extract from an article we submitted to the Buxton Advertiser, which was printed early in 2006:
Buxton Opera House has announced that it plans to add a second theatre to its already hugely popular 1903 Frank Matcham auditorium – a new studio theatre aimed at providing a performance and participatory venue for children and young people.The new 106-seat Children’s Theatre will be housed on what is currently the stage of the Paxton Suite, immediately behind the Opera House, in the Pavilion Gardens complex – formerly the old Playhouse Theatre before the Opera House itself was re-opened in 1979.
The Opera House has been in discussions with the Paxton Suite’s owners and operators, High Peak Borough Council, for the last couple of years, and jointly commissioned a feasibility study in 2003 from Creative Options Consultancy into the future of the Paxton Suite, with funding from the Derby & Derbyshire Economic Partnership.
The 106-seat theatre will have eight rows of tiered seating from ground level to just over 9 feet above the stage, which will be a plain flat-floor area of just over 40 square metres. The seats will also retract to allow the whole room to become a workshop space. Audiences and scenery will enter the new theatre from the current Water Street entrance.
A new sound lobby and an industrial sound-proofed partition across the current proscenium arch opening of the stage will insulate the new theatre from noise on St John’s Road or in the rest of the Pavilion Gardens complex.
The conversion of the Paxton stage into a new Children’s Theatre is expected to cost in the region of £500,000 and to take between three and six months to complete, with work hopefully starting in 2007. Anybody wanting to know more about the Children’s Theatre Appeal, or wishing to make a donation, should contact the Opera House’s Chief Executive, Andrew Aughton on 01298 72050.