Show Time
Words by Timo Peach
It’s a little hard to imagine an amateur dramatic society with a 1,000-strong membership and the budget to commission a brand new theatre building today. But in the late 1920s, the Bournemouth Little Theatre Club was able to do just that, and the result was a landmark in the making of the town’s 20th century heyday. Nearly 100 years later, while the organisation continues to perform, the building has faded from public attention – but that looks set to change.
Nicola explained that AUB’s involvement in the Palace Court Theatre is about providing a resource for the students right in the town centre. They are invested in the growth of the area with a desire to see Bournemouth doing well, developing the community and encouraging students to stick around after their degrees.
To manage a theatre in the “New 20s” will certainly require something different to when the art form was young and novel. So perhaps an art school is the perfect organisation to try this.
“Education by day, entertainment by night.” It’s the phrase Arts University Bournemouth declares over the Palace Court Theatre now, having originally purchased it after its fortunes faded so far it was becoming unsafe to even enter.
So just what did Nicola think she was getting into?
Being part of something.
“We have students doing work that’s public facing, we’ve got touring shows coming in that are relevant for the students and the local community, we’ve got community groups using it on a regular basis… it’s a really busy hub.” Nicola explained. “And the productions we put on here are such collaborations between different courses at AUB, which is what I love about them.”
Make-up students, costume students, acting students, the set designers, sound and lighting designers… as Nicola said, “they’re all working together on this one project – now isn’t that more realistic about what life is like when you leave university?”
I’m a firm believer that everyone should get to try a little community theatre from a young age. Theatre production has a job for everyone; it’s a huge lesson in collaboration, in risk-taking, embodiment, experimentation, in world-building – and all under the reality of budgets, timescales and audiences, but without much really being at stake yet. It’s brilliant, character bootcamp for life, theatre.
Nicola described the theatre as innovative and experimental: “a safety net that if something doesn’t go brilliantly, that’s okay, because you’ve tried something.”
It’s often been said that our area could do with a clearer sense of where to go to find all the creatives. The scenes here are practically dispersed, even though many of us cross over between them. Part of this is a lack of obvious venues to find new work and for artists to try things. To make mistakes.
“I love that - making mistakes. That’s exactly what this place is for,” Nicola agreed. “The students here are really generous to each other in their productions. And that’s what it’s about – it’s not just coming to watch something, it’s being a part of something.”
There’s more than a poetic echo from the Palace Court’s role in making Bournemouth a strong cultural destination in the booming inter-war years. Today, AUB’s ambitions for its future are transparently about making a place that lots of people will be drawn to.
“The whole idea of the Palace Court Theatre is that it’s a resource for the students to use, for teaching and learning and performing – but also for the community to use. It’s this idea of being able to hold space for creatives. I think we sit really nicely within Bournemouth - in that we can put on work that would struggle to get a platform somewhere else.”
Creativity, innovation, and community flourish when there is a bit of stable investment to try things safely, and this is exactly what Bournemouth town centre needs. It’s about thinking longer term to hold space for things to happen. Investing in a bit of quality. That’s not just business, and it’s not just education, it’s place-making.
“If we want to see innovative work and things that are a bit experimental, you can’t just do that as a one-off, you’ve got to be in it for the long term – people have got to build up trust that it’s here and it’s staying here.”
“We have a charitable foundation for the building, we have a new board as part of that and their mission is to help with the fundraising for the theatre. And that’s alongside the fact that AUB is also budgeting to make incremental changes to the building as we go along. Our next big thing is accessibility.”
Nicola and the team are organising three “open site” events for creatives to attend. To see what’s going on in the building and get an idea of the possibilities.
Not unlike the AUB Innovation Studio, this sounds like an ideal space to foster ideas and practices by putting together students with businesses with local artists with visiting professionals from industry. The creativity that spills out of rich combinations of experience.
“See what you can do and just experiment and share your stories and let us all come and have a look and be a part of it.”
By combining education with business with community, all through the practices of multi-disciplined creativity and all with a degree of certainty about how safe those experimental spaces will remain… that sounds like the place to cook up some vital new songs and stories for us. And the skills to keep bringing them alive.
It’s no memory palace - this is a portal to new futures. Let’s all help it get the attention it deserves.
You can find more about the open site events and the full schedule of productions coming up at AUB’s Palace Court Theatre at: aub.ac.uk/campus/palace-court-theatre.
