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Dateline: 30th March, 2005
Gala Appoints New Manager Simon Stallworthy has been appointed as the new manager of Durham's Gala Theatre. A graduate of Bristol University, he began his theatre career in stage management before writing and directing two shows in Leicester, Double Act at the Haymarket Studio and Captain Incredible at the Phoenix. He then went on to the Octagon, Bolton, where he was Young People's Director, directing numerous youth theatre productions. In 1993 he took over the Angles Theatre and Arts Centre in Wisbech and two yars later joined Hull Truck, where he has directed Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, The Twelve Days of Christmas by children's TV author John Cunliffe, John Godber's Hooray For Hollywood, Mick Martin's A Weekend In England, David Bown's Stand, Shakespeare's Macbeth and Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. He also directed Kissing Sid James by Robert Farquhar which played at Hull Truck Theatre in February 1999 before embarking on a nation-wide tour of Great Britain. He recently wrote and directed Gold!, an 80's musical, for Hull Truck Theatre which also toured nationally through Autumn 1999. In 1999 he returned to the Octagon as Executive Director. He left this position in September 2000 after directing Misconceptions by David Lewis which will was nominated for Best Production in the Manchester News Theatre Awards 2001. He has recently directed 100 years in Worktown, a Year of the Artist funded projected which produced a piece of theatre from an oral history project examining working life in Bolton over the last century. For the last two years he has worked in Television, both for the BBC and on ITV's Coronation Street, though is still pursuing various stage projects. He takes up his post on 4th April. The Gala Theatre, the largest regional theatre to be built for ten years when it opened on 15th January 2002 and which cost £14m, has had a troubled history. It was forced to cancel its big opening celebration (with with pop band Westlife) after it failed to sell enough tickets and by May was in deep trouble. The company put in to run the theatre, Entertainment Team (Durham) Ltd., was wound up on Wednesday 22nd May, just hours after the theatre's owners, Durham City Council, terminated its contract. The company had debts of £690,000 and assets of just £7,000. In June 2002 it was announced that the management team at the theatre would remain in post after the take-over by Durham City Council, following local rumours that a number of well-known NE theatre figures had been approached to take over. However in October general manager Rob Flower was made redundant as the council completed an arrangement with poducer Charles Vance to programme the theatre, creating a rep company based at the theatre which would then tour shows nationally. In June 2003 the city council announced that the theatre wasmeeting its financial target for the deficit to be reduced to £400,000 by the end of the financial year. Later that year, in association with Pantoni Pantomimes, it produced Cinderella, its first panto (which was to play to a 65% audience). By December 2003 it became obvious that the teatre was not reaching its targets, needing a subsidy of £460,000 for the first seven months although only £200,000 had been budgeted for. Changes were made to the way shows were being booked and in the number of performances to help reduce the deficit. Even so, the council announced, the theatre's future was looking bright. Then the management team of the successful Darlington Civic Theatre was brought in to run the theatre under contract to the city council and attempt to set it on an even keel. By August 2004 the city council was saying that, in spite of its having lost £750,000 in the last year, the future of the theatre was safe. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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