KIDDERMINSTER PLAYHOUSE
1946 - 1968 A Souvenir
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WHAT NEXT?
Kenneth Rose, director, producer, actor, author, composer, librettist and dreamer of dreams, has contributed this tailpiece, asking the questions :
| Why was the Playhouse never adequately supported ? |
| What hope is there for a new theatre ? |
From the start the Nonentities insisted that the Playhouse belonged to the community and that it was not the perquisite of a single amateur society. But the society was met with distrust and suspicion from those who could have bought the old Opera House themselves but did not.
Speakers paid lip-service to their public-spiritedness but no opportunity was lost to make things difficult for them, whether in contesting rating exemptions the law provided for or in doling out grants in quarterly payments.
All this is now history. Whether the domination of the Playhouse by one man was the cause of its survival for 22 years or of its desperate struggle is for others to decide. The trust which will run a new theatre will be a combination of all the talents and all those interested in the arts - with a professional director.
Cheeseparing and shoestring productions will be a thing of the past. Public subsidy will bring lavish entertainment, with a glittering array of glass and concrete to bring in the youngsters and coffee bars and restaurants to make the theatre a focal point by night and day.
The theatre will start as a success because it will be part of a nationwide resurgence of interest. But, just as towards the end of the stewardship of the Nonentities the embossed "N" over the proscenium meant nothing to the average patron, so in years to come few will remember one man's dream of a theatre "of our very own" back in 1937 or how, having made a dream come true for more than two decades, he and his fellow-dreamers sold all they had and gave it to the people of Kidderminster - and with the humility necessary to all actors walked out of the limelight and faded from the scene.