Amanda Hall Interview: The Theatre Royal in the 1970s and the Facilities Now
Title
Amanda Hall Interview: The Theatre Royal in the 1970s and the Facilities Now
Date
19 September 2017
Description
Oral history interview with Amanda Hall, a locally based director, choreographer and youth theatre leader.
What's the story?
Director and choreographer Amanda Hall has had strong links with the Theatre Royal for many years, from performing in the venue in a special schools show in the 1980s to her involvement with Nottingham Operatic Society and in particular from 2014 with Carlton Operatic Society.
In this interview, Amanda remembers the Theatre Royal in the 1970s with its inadequate dressing rooms and how the modern facilities now at the venue are so essential for the shows she has worked on:
When this was all redone in the seventies, is that when it was? 1977. My brother, I’ve got two younger brothers and the middle child, Ashley, he actually performed with Ken Dodd, in that opening production that was on in the new theatre. So I do actually remember the old theatre. I remember the centre aisle in the seating. I remember how you used to come in. I remember the old dressing rooms on the far side of the stage. Everything’s this side now, on stage right. There were dressing rooms on stage left and they were like you’d imagine. They were just long corridor type dressing rooms and just one on top of each other. And it was always the dancers, of course, that were on the top floor. So if you forgot anything, and you’d got to run up all those flights of stairs to get to your dressing room, to grab whatever it was, to come running all the way back down. So it was very different.
Oh, the facilities are fabulous. They are. They’re really good. And just having showers in dressing rooms and toilet facilities and all those sort of things. You know, it’s a new space. If you go to lots of old theatres, the backstage can be really grim. And we all go out and do this fab job on stage and it all looks fantastic and you go back to a really dodgy dressing room. But here it’s really nice and everything is very open. It means that for a company like Carlton Operatic, that brings in big groups of people, we can house all those people together as well, which is nice. The dressing rooms down on the bottom floor, that you can get sixteen people in or something. That’s great for us because it means that whole group of girls can stay together and they’re not all split up into fours or sixes, or something. Because for us it’s a hobby. People come and do this. They dance in these shows, they sing, they perform, and they do it as a hobby. So they want to have fun that week. They don’t want to be just locked away somewhere. The performing is great, but it’s about social as well and having the team there together. So it’s really good facilities.
In this interview, Amanda remembers the Theatre Royal in the 1970s with its inadequate dressing rooms and how the modern facilities now at the venue are so essential for the shows she has worked on:
When this was all redone in the seventies, is that when it was? 1977. My brother, I’ve got two younger brothers and the middle child, Ashley, he actually performed with Ken Dodd, in that opening production that was on in the new theatre. So I do actually remember the old theatre. I remember the centre aisle in the seating. I remember how you used to come in. I remember the old dressing rooms on the far side of the stage. Everything’s this side now, on stage right. There were dressing rooms on stage left and they were like you’d imagine. They were just long corridor type dressing rooms and just one on top of each other. And it was always the dancers, of course, that were on the top floor. So if you forgot anything, and you’d got to run up all those flights of stairs to get to your dressing room, to grab whatever it was, to come running all the way back down. So it was very different.
Oh, the facilities are fabulous. They are. They’re really good. And just having showers in dressing rooms and toilet facilities and all those sort of things. You know, it’s a new space. If you go to lots of old theatres, the backstage can be really grim. And we all go out and do this fab job on stage and it all looks fantastic and you go back to a really dodgy dressing room. But here it’s really nice and everything is very open. It means that for a company like Carlton Operatic, that brings in big groups of people, we can house all those people together as well, which is nice. The dressing rooms down on the bottom floor, that you can get sixteen people in or something. That’s great for us because it means that whole group of girls can stay together and they’re not all split up into fours or sixes, or something. Because for us it’s a hobby. People come and do this. They dance in these shows, they sing, they perform, and they do it as a hobby. So they want to have fun that week. They don’t want to be just locked away somewhere. The performing is great, but it’s about social as well and having the team there together. So it’s really good facilities.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Diane Jones & Jennifer Sherwood
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
