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We're Back!Dateline: 11th November, 2001Well, it's taken a while, but here we are, a new British Theatre Guide built on the ashes of the old About British Theatre site. I'd been in Germany. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the twinning of South Tynesdie and Wuppertal and there was a major celebration performance in Wuppertal's Opera House. Taking part were the Wuppertal Big Band, the Customs House (South Shields) Dance Group, and the Wuppertal Schools' Music Theatre Company. The latter were doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and five of my students had been invited to join the cast. We flew out on the Friday afternoon; they rehearsed on Saturday morning; there was a Tech rehearsal on Saturday evening and they performed on Sunday afternoon. Then there was a party on Sunday evening and on Monday we left Wuppertal on the WSMT coach to return to South Tyneside where they would be performing the show for two nights at the Customs House. We docked at the Tyne Commission Quay at nine am on Tuesday 25th September, arrived in school at ten and I managed to get home just before three. At six I collected my email to discover one with the subject line "Your relationship with About". It was the bullet. Blah, blah, blah ... your time with us ... your hard work ... best wishes ... you're sacked. Four and a half years were over in a dozen or so lines! I was shocked, to say the least. I was having dinner with the German staff, so I pushed it to one side, got into the car - and the damned thing wouldn't start! I had to get a taxi and so was late. Lots of wine and sympathy from my German colleagues, then back home. Online once more, and there was a missive entitled Former Guide FAQ, and then my About email account was suspended. I have to admit my first reaction was "To hell with it! I'll get a life." Then the emails started arriving at my personal address. Lots of About British Theatre visitors expressing their concern and sympathy - and asking me to set up again. These emails continued to arrive for days afterwards. Over a hundred people took the trouble to write to me. I was really touched. I did, of course, reply to them all immediately but I'd like to take this opportunity to say thanks to them publicly. You made me feel much better. Thank you for that. So now the British Theatre Guide is online, with one of the new top level domains. I've also bought the domain name www.britishtheatreguide.org.uk which redirects to this one, but the .co.uk and .com domains have already gone. If you type either of them into your browser's address line, you'll find yourself at the Society of London Theatre's home page, the Official London Theatre Guide. It's a good site, but it's not this one! So, my promise for the future. This may look different, but it is still the same site. There'll still be all the main features of the old site - the regular articles, the news pages, the actors and directors pages, the how-tos, the Playwright's FAQ, the Links Libraries, everything - and it'll continue to develop. There'll be the same pattern of updates - Sunday afternoon UK time - and even the same Newsletter (but purely text, not HTML!). I hope soon to get a search facility set up and we already have a Forum (on Delphi at the moment, but I'm aiming to set one up as an integral part of the site - just as soon as I can get the CGI script up and running). There's no Chat, but very, very few ever used it anyway. Please keep the emails coming - peter@britishtheatreguide.info is the address. Information about new links, suggestions about content, press releases of UK theatre interest, details of broken links - they're all welcome. So - welcome back! Articles Indices: |