This weekend I went back to Warwickshire where I grew up for a friend’s birthday and we decided to stay in Stratford. I’d never visited Stratford as a tourist as it’s a town where I spent so much time in my early teens so it was like looking at it from a new angle.
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre had also played a massive part in my childhood and it formed my enduring love for the theatre. When I was 13 I had played ‘Cobweb’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with The RSC and it basically changed my life…it was that point which made me committed to the theatre and move in a certain direction and end up training at RADA. I hadn’t visited the the theatre for years…I don’t even know why; maybe something to do with not wanting my memories altered or maybe just that when I’m down there I’m there to visit my mum…whatever the reason, it was a wonderful revisiting of the Art Deco part of the theatre designed by Elizabeth Scott, built in 1932, and thankfully it felt like it had maintained the essence of how I remembered it…
So here are some visual meanderings from the weekend… ( The Towhouse is a wonderful Georgian building and was a really lovely, friendly and central place to stay btw )Holy Trinity Church or Shakespeare’s Church The back of The Swan TheatreArt Deco details of Elizabeth Scott’s 1930’s design of The Royal Shakespeare Theatre The incredible marquetry details on the Circle Bar doors… The ticket booths have to be my favourite…I spent so many Saturday afternoons queuing for last minute deals, standing tickets or returns…I loved the, now redundant, illuminated ashes detail for the smokers in the audience…can’t even imagine that in a theatre now!!And I pulled out the programme from the production I was in…Below: I’m the one with the sailor hat on the far left and also perched on Titania’s back in rehearsals……and Stratford is, as always, a great place to aimlessly wander around. I knew all these places so well and wondered what it would have been like back in my teens if I had had an iphone !and when I went to pick my son up from my Mum’s, she pulled out this etching of Stratford Theatre by Alice Barnwell for me…it had been my Grandmother’s and I couldn’t be happier to now have it on my wall…
