Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Citizens Theatre" in English language version.
In 1977 the Palace, which was located where the current Citizens car park is, was subject to an order for demolition, with very little notice given. The then General Manager of the Citizens, Clare Blenkinsop, arranged a stay of execution in order to rescue the best Victorian fittings that were still a part of the Palace's decor. Citizens Theatre staff worked overnight and saved some of the original features of the building – statues of the four muses, William Shakespeare and Robert Burns from the exterior as well as the nautch girls and elephants from the interior
We will be enlarging and modernising the building which will involve demolishing large sections of the building including the current foyer and administrative offices. But rest assured at the core of the rebuilding will still be our unique Victorian auditorium which makes the Citizens so special.
It's September 2019. And after several years of design, development, fundraising, tendering, investigation, testing and more, demolition has officially started on site at the Citizens Theatre.
The area shown in yellow was only built in 1996 and will remain largely as it was. It will have a staircase removed, the old offices replaced with the new toilet block for front of house, and some simplified circulation but will still house production storage areas and the main rehearsal room as before.
It has been a good while since my last post. In line with government guidance the construction site was forced to close in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic crisis unfolded....Three months have passed and we can finally get back on site and start things up again.
However, at the heart of the building is the auditorium and stage, still in the original sandstone box in which it was built in 1878...The idea is to peel back all the layers around the sandstone box that contains them, opening up and rationalising more useful spaces in back-of-house and creating accessible new public spaces containing a foyer, cafe/bar, studio theatre, learning and participation studios, and other facilities fit for today's audiences.
During the summer of 1988 the old foyer and bars were demolished to make way for a major redevelopment of the front of house facilities. During this phase the theatre continued its operations by building a temporary in-the-round theatre with raked seating on the actual stage behind the lowered safety curtain. Access to this space was through an emergency exit with a temporary box office set up outside and one of the rooms beside the stage was turned into a bar.
The main theatre opened that year [1988] with the Christmas show, albeit with limited facilities as the building work had not been completed.
In 1991 a decision was taken to open two studio venues to enable the theatre to extend its repertoire. This involved re-appropriating both the new circle bar and the new stalls bar areas. The stalls studio was created as a traverse seating space with seating banks at opposite ends of the auditorium seating a maximum 50 people. The Circle studio was created in the round and now seats a maximum of 100. The stalls bar was moved to the centre of the stalls foyer and the circle bar to the side of the circle foyer. These studios opened in January 1992 and were an immediate success.
In 1998 a National Lottery grant enabled further building works. This created a new full size rehearsal room, a new scene dock, FOH offices, stage door and lift access to all backstage areas was built on the north side, and a new paint area on the south side.
While the destructors bang about on the other side, a temporary studio theatre will be built on the stage, providing room for about 250 spectators and a small acting area
...the theatre relies on its Christmas show to balance the books. Maximum audiences of 250 are not going to pay the bills, so a timely return to the bigger auditorium is critical.
The classical shared façade with the Citizens' Theatre was also torn down, leaving only a small portion of the balustrade shown in the photograph below.
The classical shared façade with the Citizens' Theatre was also torn down, leaving only a small portion of the balustrade shown in the photograph below.
