Chichester Festival Theatre is one of the UK's flagship theatres, with a national and international reputation for producing a wide range of theatrical productions, from musicals and comedies, to classic drama and innovative new writing. The theatre also boasts a growing programme of education and community initiatives, including a thriving youth theatre.
On easter Monday 2013, the Youth Theatre raised £3000 in aid of RENEW.
Around 200 people braved the cold to help the Youth Theatre in its quest to lay a mile of pound coins to get them into the Guinness Book of Records!
Watch the basement for the new Festival Theatre being dug over three weeks in under a minute and a half! The 'reduced dig' goes down to a depth of almost five metres.
View a visualisation of the complete re-build of the Festival Theatre from our Contractors, Osborne. This animated video takes you through each stage day-by-day until 2014 when the Theatre re-opens.
In our second RENEW video, we meet the people looking after the build - Steve Tompkins and Lucy Picardo from Haworth Tompkins Architects and Mike Elwell, our Project Manager.
Find out what stage the rebuild is at and a brief look at the future.
RENEW is our £22 million redevelopment project for the Festival Theatre. For more information on RENEW, visit cft.org.uk/renew.
Please enjoy a Christmas treat as a thank you for your continuing support of Chichester Festival Theatre: our video of Festival 2012 actors recounting their favourite things about Christmas. Why not tell us your favourite thing about the festive season below?
Look out for many familiar faces including Derek Jacobi, Dervla Kirwan, Timothy West, Penelope Keith and more.
Please let us take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
Meet some of the key players and find out what we've achieved so far in the first RENEW video.
This is the first in a series of shorts to keep you bang up-to-date with the project and people involved in making the redevelopment a reality. The next edition will be released in January 2013.
Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is a limited edition celebration of one of the UK's most important and much-loved theatres in its 50th Anniversary year.
Beautifully designed and illustrated with production photographs, press cuttings and previously unpublished backstage photos, this hardback book explores the first 50 years of this vibrant theatre. It is an absorbing story of the people who have contributed to its history, from the local
ophthalmologist with a dream to all the great stars of stage and screen, past and present, who have performed on its stage, a list which includes Joan Collins, Derek Jacobi, Patrick Stewart, Ingrid Bergman, Bridget Bardot, Ian McKellen and Imelda Staunton among many others.
Written by Kate Mosse (Citadel), international best-selling author, playwright, broadcaster and Chichester resident.
Kate Mosse interviews Toby Stephens after a performance of Private Lives.
For Toby Stephens Chichester Festival Theatre runs deep. It was back during the legendary 1964 season that his parents Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, both part of the "nucleus National Theatre Company", appeared at Chichester; Robert had understudied Olivier the year before but now Maggie joined the company. And happily both have returned in the intervening years. And so it was perhaps no surprise that a young Toby Stephens should find his way to Chichester as part of the stage crew in 1987. And now in its fiftieth year, Toby has received widespread acclaim for his Elyot in Private Lives, just as his father did in a West End Production in 1972 opposite his mother, playing Amanda.
Join Philip Hoare, author of the highly regarded Noël Coward: A Biography, as he goes on a biographical journey into Coward's shimmering text to reveal some of the complexity beneath.
For a next generation theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre partnered with the next generation of architects, Assemble. This outstanding team of young designers and builders devised a playhouse able to open up to Oaklands Park or enclose us in new worlds. This is the deconstruction of Theatre on the Fly.
More info at www.cft.org.uk/totf
An innovative audio performance exploring the site of Chichester Festival Theatre. Examining the legacy of Leslie Evershed-Martin and the Modernist architects, Powell and Moya, this is an exciting experience.
Recorded on Saturday 15 September in the Steven Pimlott Building.
Director, actor and writer Janet Suzman meets Kate Mosse to discuss the role of Cleopatra, her new production of Antony & Cleopatra, and her new book "Not Hamlet: meditations on the frail position of women in drama"
Recorded on the 6 September 2012 in the Minerva Theatre.
Dan Rebellato, playwright and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London, has published widely on British 20th Century drama and offers insight and context to Absurd Person Singular.
CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE 7 - 29 SEPTEMBER 2012
Desire and duty collide in Shakespeare's captivating tragedy of politics, passion and power.
Two charismatic leaders, Mark Antony of Rome and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, are caught in an all-encompassing love that threatens the Empire. Rome will do all it can to pull them apart. Or it will destroy them both.
Kim Cattrall plays Cleopatra. Theatre includes Private Lives, The Cryptogram and Whose Life is it Anyway? Film includes Meet Monica Velour, The Ghost Writer and Sex and the City 1 and 2.
Michael Pennington plays Antony. Credits include The Syndicate, The Master Builder, Collaboration, Taking Sides; The Iron Lady, Judgement Day, Love is My Sin, extensive work with the RSC and his English Shakespeare Company.
Janet Suzman's directing credits include the award-winning productions of the Johannesburg Othello, The Free State and Death of a Salesman. Acting credits include Hedda Gabler, Antony and Cleopatra and Dream of the Dog.
MORE INFORMATION AT WWW.CFT.ORG.UK
RENEW aims to sustain and improve the unique Grade 2* Festival Theatre, and enhance its significant contribution to the district and county economy. We are working sympathetically with the original design to create a theatre with facilities fit for the 21st century.
Find out more at http://www.cft.org.uk/renew
For a next generation theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre partnered with the next generation of architects, Assemble. This outstanding team of young designers and builders have devised a playhouse able to open up to Oaklands Park or enclose us in new worlds.
The bold design celebrates the theatrical fly tower, which beautifully exposes all the ropes, rails and pulleys that lift and lower scenery, and gives the new theatre both its name and a unique capacity for Chichester Festival Theatre.
More info at www.ft.org.uk/totf
Music: Joachim de lux -- do fond de l'ambime (reinterpreted by johnny_ripper )
Recorded in the Festival Theatre on 19 July.
Gareth Valentine is interviewed by Kate Mosse about the crafty art of musical direction and working with Trevor Nunn and Stephen Mear to create Kiss Me, Kate.
Arts Council England is not responsible for the social media content on this organisation's page
Director Richard Eyre on The Pajama Game
RENEW: Time lapse of the Festival Theatre seats and stage are removed
RENEW: Time lapse of the Basement being dug
RENEW: A Visualisation of the project
RENEW: Meet the team behind the build
Christmas 2012 at Chichester Festival Theatre
RENEW: The first phase...Demolition
RENEW: Admin + Box Office Demolition
Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty
After Words: Toby Stephens' Chichester
Pre-show Talk: Noël Coward's Private Lives
Alan Ayckbourn: Britain's Secret Radical
Pre-Show Talk: Opening Up Surprises
Theatre on the Fly Chichester - Full build
The Crafty Art of Musical Direction
