Citizens Theatre marks one year to go as redevelopment progresses towards 2024 completion.
As 2023 draws to a close, the Citizens Theatre marks an important milestone in its ongoing redevelopment, with work on the building set to complete next year and productions on stage returning by the end of 2024.
The redeveloped building will transform the experiences of audiences, participants
and performers and secure the future of one of Scotland’s most iconic buildings and leading producing theatre companies.
The Citizens Theatre moved out of its historic home in the Gorbals in June 2018,
ahead of the first major redevelopment of the Category B listed building since it began life as a working theatre in 1878. The last 18 months have seen several major milestones on site, including the installation of a new fly tower and the return of the theatre’s original stone sculptures to the building’s roof.
Designed by Bennetts Associates, the extensive redevelopment is bringing the iconic building into the 21 st century. At its heart is a substantial restoration of the original sandstone Victorian auditorium, wrapped in an entirely new three storey building
which crucially provides universal access for artists and audiences. It also delivers new rehearsal, participation, and studio spaces supporting expanded activities for the community and offering Scotland’s rich ecology of theatre companies new spaces to rehearse and perform in. This includes a new 150 seat Studio Theatre which can have in the round or end on seating configurations. New bar facilities and social spaces will encourage audiences to linger and explore the building while improved backstage facilities and artist accommodation will be transformative for performers, creatives and visiting companies.
Key to the design is a commitment to preserve the unique heritage of the building and improve access to it, including vital structural interventions to the Victorian auditorium and stagehouse, and historic paint frame and stage machinery. New public access will be given to these heritage features through viewing windows while shows are being made and built - allowing visitors a glimpse of the talent behind the magic. Like the many old and new traditions that make up the identity of the building, the design will continue to marry heritage with a contemporary look and feel, delivering spaces full of character.
Work on site by the contractor Kier commenced in autumn 2019, before being disrupted by the Covid lockdown. Work was able to recommence under covid safety restrictions, but the pandemic and other significant UK and global events continued to have an impact on progress. The delicate work of upgrading the building while preserving its unique heritage has also resulted in several challenges during the rebuild, with various unforeseen on-site discoveries, some structurally critical, affecting overall progress to completion.
As 2023 draws to a close, the Citizens Theatre marks an important milestone in its ongoing redevelopment, with work on the building set to complete next year and productions on stage returning by the end of 2024.
The redeveloped building will transform the experiences of audiences, participants
and performers and secure the future of one of Scotland’s most iconic buildings and leading producing theatre companies.
The Citizens Theatre moved out of its historic home in the Gorbals in June 2018,
ahead of the first major redevelopment of the Category B listed building since it began life as a working theatre in 1878. The last 18 months have seen several major milestones on site, including the installation of a new fly tower and the return of the theatre’s original stone sculptures to the building’s roof.
Designed by Bennetts Associates, the extensive redevelopment is bringing the iconic building into the 21 st century. At its heart is a substantial restoration of the original sandstone Victorian auditorium, wrapped in an entirely new three storey building
which crucially provides universal access for artists and audiences. It also delivers new rehearsal, participation, and studio spaces supporting expanded activities for the community and offering Scotland’s rich ecology of theatre companies new spaces to rehearse and perform in. This includes a new 150 seat Studio Theatre which can have in the round or end on seating configurations. New bar facilities and social spaces will encourage audiences to linger and explore the building while improved backstage facilities and artist accommodation will be transformative for performers, creatives and visiting companies.
Key to the design is a commitment to preserve the unique heritage of the building and improve access to it, including vital structural interventions to the Victorian auditorium and stagehouse, and historic paint frame and stage machinery. New public access will be given to these heritage features through viewing windows while shows are being made and built - allowing visitors a glimpse of the talent behind the magic. Like the many old and new traditions that make up the identity of the building, the design will continue to marry heritage with a contemporary look and feel, delivering spaces full of character.
Work on site by the contractor Kier commenced in autumn 2019, before being disrupted by the Covid lockdown. Work was able to recommence under covid safety restrictions, but the pandemic and other significant UK and global events continued to have an impact on progress. The delicate work of upgrading the building while preserving its unique heritage has also resulted in several challenges during the rebuild, with various unforeseen on-site discoveries, some structurally critical, affecting overall progress to completion.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm Alex McGowan, I'm the Executive Director of the Citizens Theatre. We're standing on
00:17 the foyer of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in the Gorbals and we're looking forward to
00:23 getting the theatre reopened in 2024 and we are on a tour today so that you can see what
00:30 work's been done, the bits of work that are still to be done and the scale of work and
00:34 intervention that's been done on this historic building to get it ready again for audiences
00:39 in Glasgow.
00:40 Just remind people when the last audiences and shows would have been in here.
00:45 So we moved out the sits in 2018, I think it was June 2018 would have been the last
00:53 public performances here and at the end of that we then had several months of stripping
00:59 out all our equipment, putting a lot of our furniture and desks and files and that into
01:04 storage and we moved the company into temporary accommodation in various locations in Glasgow
01:11 and that was across the back end of 2018 and then in 2019 the construction firm Kier would
01:18 have started the process of demolishing the parts of the building that we were doing away
01:22 with before they could then start the construction phase of the project which started in 2020.
01:27 So there's been quite a lot of work that's happened since 2020, talk us through some
01:31 of the main elements of that work.
01:35 Main elements were the most significant areas where work's been getting done is actually
01:38 in the historic theatre itself, the original Citizens Theatre.
01:45 What we'd call the stage house, so the stage and the technical area above the stage, the
01:51 flying floor, the flying system has all been stripped out and brand new facilities put
01:56 in including a fly tower.
01:58 There's a video on the website that people can still look at and you'll see the new fly
02:02 tower structure being craned into place and that's added almost two storeys onto the height
02:07 of the building over the top of the stage.
02:10 The auditorium itself where the audience sit has been entirely stripped back to the bare
02:14 bones.
02:15 We've had to make a lot of structural interventions there because the old historic building needed
02:20 a lot of care and attention, not all of which we anticipated, to make it safe and sound
02:26 for another hundred years.
02:28 So there's a lot of effort gone into that Victorian auditorium and changing the seating
02:33 areas not so much in the stalls level but in the higher areas where the sight lines
02:38 were very poor and we couldn't use them.
02:41 Once the building reopens we'll have a greater seating capacity, almost 200 odd more seats
02:46 than we had before and that's because of the structural changes we've made in the upper
02:51 circle to the theatre.
02:52 The experience of coming into the theatre from the street will be very different than
02:55 it was.
02:56 Absolutely, the front facade of the theatre on Gorbal Street has changed a lot.
03:03 The old sits, for those that remember it, you came to it through a revolving door and
03:08 a wall that was really just a continuation of the building next to us which is the Sheriff's
03:13 Court and it was the same brick facade.
03:16 We've now got a brand new frontage on the building, glass all the way down the front
03:20 so it's more inviting, you can actually see into the building and to keep the links back
03:25 to the historic past of the theatre, the statues that formed part of the old sits naturally
03:30 came from the theatre that burnt down next to the sits.
03:34 We rescued them years and years ago and they've now gone back up on the front of the sits
03:38 so there was always statues overlooking this part of the Gorbals and the front of theatres
03:42 here so we're proud to have them back there again.
03:45 The experience of coming into the auditorium, do you think people will feel that it's a
03:49 different place or will it feel familiar to them?
03:52 I don't know, we sometimes joke and say folk might come back in and go 'all that time,
03:56 what have they done?'
03:57 That would be the dream because you want that, the auditorium was fantastic, I think folk
04:01 that have been to the sits before know that when you're sat in the seats here you were
04:06 very close to the stage, you felt very close to the actors.
04:09 When you come back in that feeling won't have gone, it'll feel very familiar so in that
04:15 respect we don't want to mess with what the Victorian architects got right which was the
04:20 proportions of the theatre.
04:22 We've just made it far more accessible for people, there's level access, there's better
04:26 access for people who may not be able to go up and down stairs and need to use wheelchairs
04:33 and we've got lifts to all parts of the building now that we didn't have before so accessing
04:38 the building will be a lot easier but hopefully you won't find the auditorium itself to be
04:42 too different although the foyer where we're standing at the moment will look and feel
04:46 very different to what people will remember.
04:48 What will be the big differences in terms of making and putting on shows at the sits
04:53 in future?
04:55 For those of us that work in the theatre and work here the backstage and technical facilities
05:00 are much much improved up to a standard that other theatres would take for granted to be
05:06 honest and the sits was always compromised.
05:09 When we built our sets there was insufficient space backstage to move a set from the workshop
05:16 onto the stage so we'd have to dismantle it, bit like flat pack furniture and then reconstruct
05:21 it on the stage and that takes a lot of time.
05:23 Now we'll be able to make our sets and move them straight onto the stage, no bother.
05:29 Similar with sets coming in where the lorries come up to the side of the theatre now there's
05:34 a massive big full-sized dock door that means you can offload off the back of a truck straight
05:38 onto the stage.
05:40 In the past that was impossible at the sits.
05:42 Give us an idea of when audiences will be able to come back for the first time and see
05:47 shows again.
05:49 At the moment we're hoping to get some events happening late autumn next year that won't
05:54 necessarily be full-scale shows, we'll want to start getting people coming into the building
05:58 and seeing it as soon as we can.
06:00 In terms of the first full-scale sits production you can sit in your seat and watch, we're
06:04 very much planning for that to be the Christmas show 2024.
06:08 Hi I'm Dominic Hill, I'm the Artistic Director of the Citizens Theatre and we're standing
06:12 in the dress circle of the new building.
06:16 So this project pretty much dates back to when you started here, tell us a little bit
06:21 about that.
06:22 Yeah I remember in my first few days here at the end of 2011 there was a report that
06:28 was put on my desk which was called 'Dilapidation Report' and basically since that time, so
06:36 since the very beginning really, we knew, I knew that this project needed to be done
06:43 and I guess it took a long time to actually get to the point where we broke ground and
06:49 we went through many sort of iterations of the project.
06:54 But during that time you could absolutely see and feel why it was needed, we had rain,
06:59 I remember one Christmas show where it literally rained on stage, we had sewage coming in through
07:05 under the stage at one point.
07:09 Anyone with any kind of mobility issues would find it incredibly hard to get round the building
07:14 so just incrementally over those years one really felt the kind of need for it.
07:20 So during that time we were working with architects and people to make the project happen, raising
07:28 the money to make the project happen.
07:29 So it's amazing to be here today and how many years later is that?
07:34 Twelve years later and we're looking at the finish line which is a fantastic feeling.
07:39 Was the future of the theatre very much at risk before you managed to get that funding
07:43 package and the plans agreed?
07:45 I don't think it was ever at risk but I think we knew that if, I mean I guess eventually
07:50 if we hadn't done something about it there would have been a problem.
07:54 So we knew it had to be done, it was never a vanity project, it was always like this
07:59 needs to be done to protect the future of this building.
08:03 The building itself, as we've walked around you've seen how complicated the project is,
08:08 the idea of meshing an old building with a new building I think has brought its own kind
08:14 of complications and discoveries.
08:17 So all through the project people have found things that they didn't anticipate and that
08:23 means we've had to deal with them as we go along which is again I think great for the
08:28 long term future of the organisation but it has held us up as we get towards the end.
08:35 Well I can't yet name names but we are in the process of putting together I think a
08:41 really exciting first season.
08:44 One of the things that we have been able to do over the last few years is to commission
08:48 a lot of writers and so there's plenty of new work that hopefully will be part of the
08:56 season, the opening seasons.
08:59 Certainly that sense of scale, we've talked about during the tour how the opportunities
09:06 are greater for us with the new resources so I think we'll be able to see work at scale,
09:14 it allows us to do more in terms of design, flying, we'll have a band pit for the first
09:21 time so this sense of more opportunities for us creatively which feel really exciting.
09:29 I think kind of undeniably when you walk through the door it will feel different.
09:35 I think one of the most exciting things about the whole project is seeing the original sandstone
09:42 building which has always been kind of boarded up before so I think the experience will be
09:48 different but I know will be greater.
09:52 But I think what's also important and that's something that we've talked about all through
09:55 this project is about conserving that original feeling of the sits, that feeling that when
10:01 you go into the auditorium there's something extraordinary and special and magical about
10:06 that auditorium which makes it in my mind the best auditorium in the country and that
10:11 won't change.
10:12 The sits that everyone loves and knows will be unchanged.
10:17 [Music]
10:21 (upbeat music)