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Theatre in South East England: West SussexOf the four counties which make up the South East Arts area, West Sussex has probably the best known theatres, mainly because of the Chichester Festival, a major UK theatre event. The Chichester Festival Theatre (1374 seats) produces both plays and musicals during the festival season (April to September), and for the rest of the year is a receiving house with a wide-ranging programme. The Minerva Theatre, which is properly the studio space of the Festival Theare although it is usually regarded as a separate theatre in its own right, is also dual-purpose, both producing and receiving, and concentrates on the new and the experimental. It seats 278, which does tend to lift it out of the studio category. All the other West Sussex towns have just one theatre venue, with the exception of Worthing, which has four. Two of these are national touring houses, the Connaught (514) and the Pavilion (850), and one, the Assembly Hall, is a concert hall, the home of the Worthing Symphony Orchestra. Seating 930, it has a mixed programme with great emphasis on msic. The fourth venue is the Northbrook Theatre, part of Northbrook College. Its programme, too, is mixed and varied, and concentrates on the local community. The Hawth, an arts centre in Crawley, is unusually large for an arts centre: its main house seats 850 and its studio 146. As usual, it presents a broad mix of events. The Chequer Mead Theatre and Arts Centre in East Grinstead is much smaller - 320 capacity - and tends to focus mainly on amateur and community events. Haywards Heath's civic centre, the Clair Hall, seats 362 and presents a "balanced programme". Horsham has two theatrical venues. The Christ's Hospital Theatre is part of the Christ's Hospital School. Built in 1974 it features high quality professional theatre, as well as school and community productions. The other Horsham venue is the Arts Centre. Its Capitol Theatre is quite large - 450 - and it also has a 100-seater studio. It takes small- and mid-scale tours. Finally, the Windmill Entertainment Centre in Littlehampton (250 capacity) splits its time evenly between theatre and film, with the theatre being primarily produced by local societies and organisations.
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