Staff at Hastings’ White Rock Theatre are enjoying a time of genuine excitement as they prepare for a fabulous new chapter in the venue’s history.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspaper. It's really
00:06 lovely to speak to Nadine Passley this morning. You are the Venue Director of the White Rock
00:10 Theatre in Hastings. You've been there five years, but you are here now at an incredibly
00:16 exciting time for the venue. I can sort of feel your excitement at what's happening.
00:22 Yeah, it is exciting.
00:24 What's, in a nutshell, what's just happened and why is it different?
00:28 So yeah, I'm new to the Venue Director position. I've just been in the position about a month,
00:32 but I've been at the venue as part of the team for about five years. And we've just
00:37 transferred from Trafalgar Studios, which is a corporate company, into the Guildhall
00:42 Trust, which is a charitable trust.
00:44 And why is that such good news?
00:46 Why is that such good news for the venue, do you think?
00:49 It's great news for the venue. Obviously, just straight off, we've come out of a time
00:53 of uncertainty. So it means that we've got that guarantee of going forwards and continuing
00:59 the legacy of the White Rock Venue, which is obviously such a relief. And we're so excited.
01:04 But also it's fantastic because the Guildhall Trust, in my opinion, are just the perfect
01:08 people to take us on for this next chapter. And we're really committed to putting in loads
01:16 of energy and just bringing back the theatre to a bit of its heyday. We're wanting to refocus
01:20 back onto live music. Obviously, the venue was the Music House, so we want to refocus
01:26 on that. We've got some really exciting live music programming coming up, Kid Capici and
01:31 supporting local bands. We've got a local album launch happening there. And we've got
01:39 Trevor Nileson, Chris Moyle, some really exciting local things coming on.
01:45 We will see the shape of the kind of programming just change subtly in the next few months,
01:51 presumably.
01:52 Yeah, you know, programming, it's a sort of long term change, I think you'll see over
01:56 time. But we've already got some sort of really exciting new things coming up. We've got the
02:01 London African Gospel Choir coming at the end of the year. There's some sort of exciting
02:05 projects that we haven't had for a while. And we're really wanting to sort of utilise
02:11 more exciting live music that we wouldn't have had previously.
02:15 It's particularly exciting after that period of uncertainty when things could have ended,
02:21 couldn't they? Could have finished. But maybe during that time, you learn just how attached
02:26 people are to the venue. People love it, don't they? They really feel something for it.
02:30 Yeah, absolutely. We are, you know, we really are a hub of the community here in Hastings.
02:35 We're right on the seafront and it's such an amazing venue. We're coming up to 96 years
02:41 old. So it's a really long standing pillar of the community. And it's so important that
02:46 legacy continues.
02:47 It's going to be so exciting to build towards that centenary, isn't it?
02:51 Yeah, definitely. It really is. And I can see some really great things coming ahead
02:56 in the next sort of four years up to that anniversary as well. We're refurbing our studio
03:01 downstairs as well over the next coming months. And we want to also utilise that and some
03:05 other spaces in the venue to just kind of really serve the community. And we're excited
03:10 about developing those spaces.
03:11 Well, hugely exciting times. Congratulations and very best wishes.
03:16 Thank you so much, Phil.
03:18 Lovely to speak to you.
03:20 Lovely to speak to you.