The Playhouse comes to The Maltings

So we got the Projectors etc in finally on Wednesday, and here are some shots of the beautiful 1940s projector - which we removed from the projection room - in it's new home on our main stairwell landing. Enjoy - and pop in and say hello sometime.

The Projector in its doomed former home at The Playhouse.

Jimmy puts the final screw in - and the projector has a new home!
It does look a bit like he is milking it. But he's putting a screw in. Honest.

Save the Arts: David Shrigley Video

Save the Arts: David Shrigley Video

A short and charming video about the importance of the arts to our economy - and our lives.

Enjoy!

The last days of the Berwick Playhouse

Berwick Playhouse - originally a beautiful theatre opened in 1914 - is due for demolition next month. It's been closed since 2005, and in the last six years has slowly begun to demolish itself. 


Original photos show a rather grand building, with detailed plasterwork on the exterior, but all the plasterwork was cleared away years ago and replaced with an uninspired but no doubt practical render. 


Like most people who have lived in Berwick for some time, I have very good memories of going to see films at the Playhouse. Spittal Variety Group, who regularly perform at The Maltings, used the Playhouse for all their productions for many, many years. 


We were given the go-ahead recently to investigate the Playhouse to see if there were any items which The Maltings would like or which would be of some use to us.


So this morning, a small but intrepid band descended and had a look around for anything that could be saved from the demolition - for items that might give some continuity between the old and new theatres in the town. 

A Spittal Variety Group Pantomime in 1974 on The Playhouse stage.

It's terribly sad to see a theatre on its last legs. So our visit was not a high-spirited one, but more about seeing what could be saved - and marvelling at this once-beautiful building, now destined to disappear. 


There have been a number of theatres in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The Playhouse, Ceaser's Palace, the Berwick Theatre - and now there's just one. Almost all the great public buildings of the town are now flats - part of the relentless drive towards a future of individualism, where presumably we all sit in white boxes watching DVDs by ourselves. Nice.


So we donned hard hats and facemasks, and found a lot of dead pigeons, dust, mould and rubble. Plus three 1940s era projectors and some small items which had been missed when the building was stripped. You can see the biggest projector we salvaged on permanent display on the stairwell at The Maltings already - it was removed from The Playhouse at 1.30pm in three sections and installed at The Maltings at 1.50pm. It was very, very heavy.

Relief plasterwork in the foyer of The Playhouse at stalls level.

The foyer at The Playhouse, looking past box office to the stairs to stalls level.

The Berwick Playhouse. The floor has been dug up for some reason, and the perspex cinema screen shattered. Behind the hideous drop ceiling is a beautiful blue curved Edwardian ceiling, with scroll work and a high proscenium. Below the stage is the orchestra pit. The water damage has been very bad indeed and the roof is in a terrible condition.

An emergency exit from the stalls.

At stage left, there are some very small toilets. The sign reads "The management of the Playhouse and S.V.G. [Spittal Variety Group, the last theatre company to regularly use the theatre] will not be held responsible for the loss of any personal items such as jewelry - money - etc back stage during the production.' It is signed, but I can't make out the signature. [It's Alex Moor's signature apparently - Thanks Jenny!] SVG staged their last production at the Playhouse in 2004, I think.

Looking from the stage up the flytower to the grid - and past it, to the sky. 

At the rear of the stalls, this is what remains of the bar. Unusually, this bar was actually open to the stalls, possibly during performances? The sign reads: 'Please do not occupy seats or smoke in the bar during the show.'

The theatre from the stage. Obviously the interior is pitch black, except where the odd ray of light spills from holes in the roof, so it was a bit of a shock to see the colours on the walls. At the rear of the stalls is the bar. The circle is too badly rotten to allow access.

The projection room was the best preserved room in the building, containing this lovely projector. All the projectionists belongings lay where they had last been touched in 2005. A bit like the Mary Celeste, to be honest. It took us two hours to dismantle and remove the projector - to its new home on the main stairwell at The Maltings Theatre, a few hundred yards away. It was a little sad to be removing it, but if we hadn't it would have been destroyed in the demolition.

[John T says: "The control buttons on the wall in the projection box were used to alter the maskings on the screen for the different film formats the 3 slides hanging up were used to do this on the projector" Thanks John!]

The old powerboard in the projection room. 
[John T tells us: " The large wheel on the power board is the dimmer for the house lights that were in before that false celling was put in." Thanks John.]

This beautiful 1940s projector is now on display at The Maltings Theatre. It's nice that it has found a new home.

We found these two projectors in a cellar. They must have been replaced by the slightly more modern projector that stood in the projection room. 1940s, we suspect. [John T tells us: "the 2 projectors you found were replaced by the 1 in situ when single reel films came in, the 2 old 1's were powered by carbon arc and you had to watch them all the time to ensure the carbon rods stayed the right distance apart." Thanks John!] The projectors will be cleaned up and installed in The Stage Door Bar at The Maltings.

Many thanks to Jimmy, Cam, Gary and Brian Martin for their help - without which, all of these items would have ended up in landfill. Any comments, questions, memories welcome.

A Life In The Day of...Wendy Payn (Head of Youth Drama)

Wake up 8 am … HUNGRY … I love breakfast and I am usually starving on a Saturday because an 8 am start is late for me.

Wake up Charlotte, aged 20 could wake up herself but being a mum is a hard habit to break in the world of Wendy!

Breakfast – yummy!

9.20am Speed walk to work with Char – she’s a fast walker!

Collect the registers, check the studio for health and safety issues.

First class 10 am about 20 or so small bundles of energy bounce into the room – some try to bounce straight back out and some stick like Velcro to mum. Help arrives in the shape of Ross, whose head is usually on fire and Stacey, who likes to ‘sizzle’. Four million games later – it’s amazing how many games you can pack into an hour – it’s time to get the next lot in.

Second class 11am .. well it is supposed to start at 11.15 am but once we catch up on the week’s gossip, Katie’s latest key ring and guess who Rory is this week, it’s nearly break time! After break this group like to improvise – their imagination always amazes me .. this group passes too quickly 12.45pm and it’s time to board the submarine – but only if you can work out how to get on.

LUNCH  - Starving (again)! My slave Ross goes to get my LARGE LATTE and CHOCCY MUFFIN, while I jump on Box office to let the girls get their lunch. 

That latte on a Saturday is the best one of the week .. last class starts at 1.30pm but like the class before they come early and despite the fact that they are not supposed to speak to Ross or myself as it is our ‘lunch time’ … well that never works .. we all discuss what bizarre filling Ross has in his sandwich and then Danny pretends to be a dinosaur.

1.30pm – I am in the zone now and we get straight down to serious game playing, warm up, impro. Break time .. same discussion every week – what show are we doing this year? I always ask for their suggestions and so this year we are doing Star Wars Chitty, Glee, Over the Rainbow - on ice.

3.30pm there’s been a MURDER, usually on a park bench and so everybody leaves. Ross and I clean the studio and it’s amazing how far kids can get with one shoe and no coat these days.

I love Saturday Drama even after 20 years, no two Saturdays are alike. New people join us, some go, some come back. Group dynamic is constantly changing, watching, inspiring, caring, guiding, enthusing pretending to be a pirate, it’s all part of it.

I would rather do another 10 hours of Saturday Drama than go to Morrisons but that’s what comes next … maybe I could make Ross go …

A Life In The Day of...Tamiko Mackie (Marketing and Development Manager)

My alarm clock is set for eight o’clock but the ‘baby alarm clock’ goes off anytime from 5:30am onwards.  Some mornings, our daughter wants to play in her room with the radio on, but most of the time she wants to cuddle.  Recently, she’s figured out how to use the camera on my phone and takes pictures of her feet.  By the time we get up, it looks like a toy bomb has gone off.

My husband heads downstairs while I chase Ruby round her room to get her dressed, which she thinks it’s hilarious. 

By the time we get downstairs, Andrew has Ruby’s breakfast ready and is packing her lunch.  I seize my latte, dash out to the garden to put out birdseed for our feathered friends and have a quick fag. Then it’s time to pull on my coat, say my goodbyes and head out the door.  I’m a true night owl, not a morning person, so it’s great that the theatre is only a two-minute walk door-to-door. 

Once I arrive at the office at 10am it is a relentless rollercoaster ride, especially on Fridays.  I work in an open plan office with our Chief Executive and other staff, so it’s very lively.  There’s usually a constant stream of people stopping in and it can be hard to concentrate.  I scan my emails for anything urgent, then finish off the press release I’ve usually written the night before.  I attend the fortnightly heads of department meeting, then dash downstairs to the in-house radio studio in the basement to do our weekly ‘What’s on at The Maltings’ feature on Radio Borders live on air.  I’ll then grab a double latte from the Maltings Kitchen (the marketing department runs on caffeine).  I personally call each person that’s won tickets on Radio Borders in order to conduct a bit of market research.  If they’ve never been to The Maltings, I try and find out why so that we can break down those barriers in the future.  That kind of personal touch is really important to bring in new audiences and engage to with the community.

I spend a lot of time on PhotoShop creating posters and adverts.  If there’s time (ha!), I like to have one of the Box Office staff proofread what I’ve done – with so many show times and dates, it’s all too easy to get something wrong.   Some visiting acts don’t provide any print materials at all, which means that a poster and flyers need to be designed in-house.  I spend far too much time doing this, but it is important to get it right as the poster sells the show.  I also try and create a weekly poster highlighting the films we are showing - I also programme all of the films we screen, which I love. I am passionate about films and there is no reason that The Maltings shouldn’t be operating like a bonafide cinema – “everyone loves movies.”  It’s just going to take time for our audience to get into the habit of coming here to see films.

Lunch?  Lunch is for wimps.  More coffee.

Every seven weeks, the next quarter’s diary of events must be prepared from scratch.  This is the most enjoyable and most tortuous part of my job.  I did the last diary completely on my own and I estimate it took about 300 hours of work total.  I even stayed up for 2-1/2 days straight at one point.  All of the images for each show must be gathered, and the ‘copy’ must be written.  There is a lot of research involved and each description must be perfect, as the goal is to effectively sell each show to the maximum number of people it’s all about “bums on seats.”  No matter how many times we proofread, there’s always an inevitable typo or error and it drives me mad! 

Before I know it, the day is nearly gone.  I always feel really stressed because there’s more things added to my “To Do” list than I can physically get done.  It’s like a boat with a leak and the water pours in faster than I can bail it out.  With the office so close, I fall into the trap on evenings or weekends of “nipping in to get a couple of things done,” then hours later…  It was a reality check when my daughter referred to my workplace as “Mommy home.”  Despite all of this, and perhaps surprisingly, I love my job, truly.  That is because the “product” I am selling is fantastic, but most of all because of the superb people I work with.  Everyone is likeable, big-hearted and exceptionally good at what they do.  There are no egos and everyone mucks in.  It is wonderful to be part of such a pleasant, supportive team – no, family - of professionals - it really is quite remarkable and rare.

The real surprise treat at near the end of the working day is to hear the office door open behind me and hear “Mummmmmmy!” when my husband and daughter stop by to say hello on their way home.  If I don’t get home in time for Ruby’s dinner, then I make sure to make it home for her bath time, bedtime stories and tucking into bed.  Andrew and I have dinner, do some tidying and more laundry, then I usually crack open the MacBook and get more work done.  We’re the thoroughly modern couple, as he sits opposite me working on his MacBook.  We stay up far too late, then I usually fall asleep reading a book and it starts all over again the next day.

A Life In The Day of...Shona Hammon (Front of House Manager)

My alarm is nearly redundant because no matter what I always seem to wake up before it springs into action!  The danger is I then switch it off and go back to sleep which if not for my four legged alarm would result in me being an even worse time-keeper than I already am!

I resisted my husband and children’s  pleadings for 23 years before giving in and welcoming a golden Labrador to our family – Millie who I now see as more my dog than anyone else’s!

After dropping my daughter at the railway station for the early train to Newcastle college I head for the beach with the dog – this is my time and even in the depth of what has just been a bitterly cold winter I enjoy the fresh air, I always walk fast, much to the annoyance of shorter legged friends.

The beauty about my work is lots of the time it doesn’t feel like work – hey everyone’s dream job!!  I thrive on the difference every day, every week brings no two are the same and that’s what keeps things interesting. 

There’s no such thing as a typical day in my life, the one thing that is constant is they are all busy and there is never enough hours to achieve everything I set out to do. 

Sometimes I will be in Box Office all day which keeps me in touch with our customers and what they are buying and other times I rush into work around 6pm for the evening’s performance.  It is important to me and my team to remember that people come here to enjoy themselves.  When I finally head home I am usually too wide awake to go to bed so will usually catch up on some “trashy” TV – I love Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives et al and relax with a glass or two of wine – did I mention I LOVE wine – dry white is my preference!  

A Life In The Day of...Neil Forrest (Technical Manager)

I’m NOT a morning person, the bulk of my work is late afternoon and into the night, so left to my own devices I wake up at about 10.00am, the first mission in the day is the pursuit of coffee. I cannot function at anything but a basic level until I’m looking at the bottom of an empty coffee cup.

My work at the Maltings is incredibly varied and no two days are the same, my job basically requires me to look after all the technical facilities in the building, from the film projector to the visiting artist to the electricity and gas supplies, computers, things with plugs and everything in between.

A typical day in my job would start at around 10.30am, I would arrive and check with the box office for any messages and check all the computer systems are behaving themselves, from there it’s a quick trip to the office to check my voicemail and emails then down to the bowels of the building and prepare the stage for the show.

There are about 40 lights usually hanging above stage, these will need coloured up and re-focused as required. This usually takes about an hour or two depending on what the lighting was used for previously.

Hopefully shortly afterwards my artists will arrive and I will give them a quick tour of the spaces and the load in will start. You would be amazed at what you can squeeze into a van, should you have too. The goods lift to the stage is a cavernous space, 6m tall and big enough to park a smallish car in, however, it is nothing compared to the TARDIS like space of a touring companies vehicle. Several loads later all the gear is down on the stage and the fit up begins.

Everybody has there own little jobs during the fit up and you can generally tell how far into the tour they are by there efficiency, early on it’s a free for all, mid tour it’s a well oiled machine, towards the end its nit picking and cabin fever is beginning to set in.

This takes up us to late lunch, I'm not a big eater during the day, so coffee and a sandwich is order of the day.

After dinner its back, normally to plotting, sounds a bit Machiavellian, but it just setting the lighting and sound levels cue by cue, light my light, sound effect by sound effect. This is quite a time consuming and complicated task usually involving speaking in a strange language that only the touring tech team and the lighting desk programmer can quite understand…

3, 6 and 11 thru 16 at 50, no try 60? Up in 3 down in 2, we’ll call that 21.1 and 36…

And this hopefully, and I use the word hopefully, takes us to about 45 minutes to curtain up, so its time for a quick break and once the stage is clear to give the stewards clearance to open the auditorium doors and let the audience in.

Sitting in the control room pre-show can be quite electric, on a big show everyone’s a little nervous and you can feel the energy the audience are giving off, its one of the major reasons I enjoy this job so much and it gets into your blood.

Then comes the call from Front of House that everyone is in and seated and its showtime, time for a quick check that everyone ready and out with the house lights, this is another favourite moment of mine when the audience chatter stops and we are all sitting in a very dark room, waiting.

During the show, everyone in the control room has their job, on a small show I might run it just myself, but if there is any live sound then its better to have 2 people operating as a problem with anything can have massive knock on effects if anything needs more that just a minor tweak.

Although I’m involved with the running of nearly every show here, I don’t actually get to see that many, I’ve usually got my head down, in the script looking for the next cue and watching everyone else in the control room has a handle on theirs, I normally only get to actually watch them toward to the end of a multiple run show when the operation of it has become second nature.

Once the shows over, I generally head to the bar, not to drink but to get a measure of the audience feeling as they are leaving and let the audience clear the auditorium so I can switch the lights on and strike the set.

Get outs are usually very different to Fit ups, normally its quiet, head down, get the job done, chatter is to a minimum and it all happens much quicker than earlier in the day, and the TARDIS effect works in reverse, all of a sudden the lift is massive and the van is a tiny box in comparison.

Helping with the van load is another sight that has to be seen to be believed, usually there is a van packer, and they will want everything in a very specific order and they manage to fit it all in like a massive game of Tetris with the strangest shaped objects, I should note at by this point, Berwick’s’ climate being what it is, it is normally raining, cold and dark.

Van pack complete, final farewell to the crew and artists, its lock up, lights out and maybe head to the bar, if its still open for a nightcap or two!?

A Life In The Day of...Miles Gregory (Chief Executive & Artistic Director)

My alarm goes off at 8am every morning, and I listen to the Today programme on Radio 4 for half an hour or so. I’m not really a morning person, and I often work late nights at the theatre, so my mornings tend to be fairly slow.

By 9.20 I’m normally having breakfast with my wife, Bob (short for Barbara), who is a theatrical tailor. We live in a very old and very rambling house in Berwick, by the river, but our kitchen is tiny, so it’s normally one of the warmest rooms in the house.

Coffee is an essential part of my morning. In the summer I have a coffee and a cigarette in our courtyard, as that’s the only time of the year it gets sun in the mornings. On a sunny morning, it’s like being in the courtyard of a Tuscan villa.

I walk to work every day as I only live about a hundred yards from the theatre. We are really lucky in Berwick to have such a beautiful theatre, just like a little opera house. My desktop background is a photograph of the Main House, packed full of people for a show. It’s an important image because it reminds me what it’s all about. Bringing people together in a communal space is unusual these days. Most of the public buildings in Berwick are now flats, so we’re one of the only places where the community gathers and sees each other.

Our offices have an amazing view, right out over the ancient roofs of the town and across the river towards the southern hills. I sometimes see seals in the river. It’s a view that’s always changing, and I find it deeply inspirational. We’re very lucky to live and work in such a beautiful town.

I don’t really eat lunch usually. Work in a theatre is about constant deadlines, so there’s a lot of time pressure. We have around 650 events a year, from workshops and classes to theatre, film, comedy, dance. I used to work as a producer for festivals and on touring shows, where you spend your time arranging and promoting a single large event or run. In a busy theatre like The Maltings, you’re effectively running a festival every week.

A theatre is heavily departmentalised; it’s really five different business rolled into one. One of my day-to-day jobs is to ensure that we are continuously improving the way we work across all of the departments, giving my team the tools they need to achieve their own goals in each department. All of our senior team are very experienced professionals who are at the top of their game. They make it look easy, even when we have hundreds of people in the building every day and fifteen events in a week. I’m really proud of them all.

My principal role is to lead our organisation towards a strategic implementation of our vision – or in other words, to ensure that we are continuously improving the way we work. In reality, this makes for an incredibly diverse and busy working life, since my responsibilities range from HR to building maintenance, negotiating service contracts to artistic programming, financial management to putting up posters, representing The Maltings at functions to picking up litter.

 I spend a lot of time on the telephone negotiating with agents and promoters to ensure that we get the right deal for every show. Theatre deals can be very complex, and the consequences for getting the deal wrong can be serious, so it’s important that I’m on the ball.

Some nights I can get home for six or seven o’clock and have dinner with Bob, who loves to cook, luckily. But if we have a full house in, or a show which I want to see personally, then I stay at the theatre until around ten or eleven pm.

The most exciting thing in theatre is a full house. There’s a unique magic to a full theatre and the whole building is full of energy on busy nights. On many Friday and Saturday nights, particularly if we’re well sold, I wear black tie and open the door for our patrons. It’s an old theatre tradition, and it gives me a chance to meet our audience – and for them to have an opportunity to give me any feedback about what we do.

Audiences are all different, but they all come here for similar reasons. I firmly believe that a night at the theatre is essentially about an escape from the day-to-day reality of life to a more magical place, so we all do our best to ensure that everyone has a good time and enjoys their evening.

I like to read a book in the evenings if I can find the time. We don’t have a TV, so it’s nice and quiet, particularly after the bustle of work. Bob might do some knitting – our first child is due in May – or we might watch a DVD.

Our bedroom is about fifteen feet away from the river, so I can usually hear it running under the old bridge as I drift off to sleep. It’s a comforting sound,  but it makes me think that the Tweed will still be flowing long after I – and the theatre – are long gone.

A Life In The Day of...Jimmy Manningham (Assistant Technician)

I don’t think everyone realises the work involved with being a projectionist and the important things one has to do in preparation. For me getting the nicotine and caffeine levels right is the first thing that is addressed. Then and only then I am able to concentrate and focus on the task in hand! Secondly checking the diary. That’s very important! Sometimes extra showings get snuck in every now and then and of course you need to know this! My job involves “building”, “showing” and “breaking” the films.  My name is Jimmy. I am the projectionist.

The films will usually arrive about a week or a few days before the showing. I like to get them built early just incase any problems arise that need sorting out. An average film will arrive in maybe 5 or 6 reels which need stuck together and put on one big reel. So firstly you have to work out whether the film is tail first or head first. The heads and the tails are the bits you’ll sometimes see the numbers counting down on and are found at the beginning and end of every reel and eventually at the start and end of the built  film. They help you determine whether you are building the film in the correct order, help protect the film in transit and finally allow the projector enough time to get up to speed when your starting the feature so you don’t miss anything or have to hear the sound track speeding up just like when your misbehaving on a record deck.  Tail first means you have to build it backwards. Starting with the credits and ending at the start. Head first is the opposite. So as your removing the head or tail from the reel you have to check that the one frame that is on it corresponds with that of the first on the reel. Sometimes they can arrive the wrong way round. If you don’t notice this when building the films you can end up with disgruntled punters wondering why half way through  Meryl Stroop is now standing on the ceiling and talking backwards. This has happened… its horrible and the applause you get from the unsympathetic crowd when its sorted is something you never ever want to hear!

So the film is built. I am getting quick at it now, it usually takes about the same amount of time as Jimi Hendrix’s Axis bold as love does to finish playing and my coffee to have got cold enough to be drank.  That’s about 38 minutes if your wondering and yes I prefer my coffee on the cold side. 

If the films are already built I like to arrive an hour before the showing. When building it I would have found out what aspect the film is in and replaced the lens in the projector accordingly. If you get this wrong people on the screen can become either very short and fat or long and tall while the punters just get understandably short tempered. It is written clearly on the film though and you shouldn’t get this wrong when working with 35mm... Now I play the waiting game. Ill be sat in my dark little room thinking about everything that could go wrong it can be quite tense! Especially if the films construction hasn’t been straight forward. The projector is a Wiley old beast as well. Once its going its fine but sometimes it likes to test you. Cogs, clutches, motors, lasers and a really really bright light bulb! it’s a proper machine. After I’ve checked everything a few more times the door will open and I’ll be given the go ahead to start the film. I then proceed to Show the final slide wait for it to finish, dowser (basically switch off or cover up) the digital projector, fade the house lights and music, switch on the 35mm projector and the unit that rewinds the film, wait a second or for it to get up to speed and flick the dowser switch on the lamp (which lets the light through and in doing so starts projection) and unmute the audio. A few quick adjustments are sometimes needed to make sure the film is in line and in focus. I then usually nip through to the auditorium to see if the sound levels are good. You cant tell when in the control room because its sound proof.

With the 35mm projector if something goes wrong its usually really obvious and fixable in some way or other. Thankfully things rarely do go wrong with the player but I still cant help getting a little twinge in my stomach if it takes a milli second longer than it should to switch over to the next layer on the disc!

When the film finishes it’s just a case of switching the lights back on and waiting for everyone to leave. Then I’ll break the film if I have time.

Much easier than building, breaking a film involves rewinding the film, finding where the reels end, splitting them, putting the heads and tails back on Then and packing it away.

 At times this job can be testing. Other times it will be fairly straight forward and Sometimes it’s even exciting. It’s certainly not boring and I usually get something from doing it. Whether that’s being inspired by a good film or getting to test the popcorn in the bar, either way its all good. 

A Life In The Day of...David Purves (Bar Manager)

After my alarm goes off, I drag myself out of bed, wash, walk the dog and get all my other bits done before coming into work.

I usually arrive at work around 5pm, but my first port of call is always box office to see what size of audience we have for that night’s performance. Along with that I always check what numbers we have booked in for forthcoming shows that look to have large audiences. Unlike most bars in which I’ve worked, different types of shows determine the type of drinkers we will have in the bar, from early drinker to late drinker, wine drinker to alchopop drinker, soft drink drinker to my favourite drinker - the heavy drinker. With these factors in mind this helps me figure out staffing and stock levels from week to week.

Having only started working here almost a year ago, I really quite heavily on past knowledge when it comes to audience typing. A lot of the staff here have either been employed or associated with the Maltings for years, this is why constantly throughout my shift I’ll be probing Wendy (Deputy Front of House Manager) or Shona (Front of House Manager) about previous shows trying to take heed from experiences that they have learned from previous years’ events.

From here usually my next port of call is to check any emails or any deliveries that might have arrived for the bar. Then we’re into the bar setting up for the night’s shift, checking the float, making sure we have ice and stocked fridges.

Typically customers start to arrive about half an hour before a performance to have pre-show drinks but the majority show up fifteen to ten minutes before curtain-up.

This can cause real problems when we have a heavy drinking audience combined with a full house, people desperate for drink and us behind the bar knowing that no matter how many bar staff we could have behind the bar at this instant we couldn’t serve any quicker.

The customers thrusting notes at you trying to get served when you know there is only so many beer taps that can be used at one time, only so much ice available at one time, on big shows the extra tills on don’t seem to help, but finally you see the end as people have their drinks and are entering the theatre.

There’s a collective sigh of relief from the bar staff “thank god that’s over”. Then you gaze over the bar and see all the empties that need clearing and cleaning, fridges need re-stocking, floats need more change. First things first though, smoke break.

Once nicotined up, glasses, stock and change all reset, we turn our attention to any interval pre-orders we have. We try to time placing them up to within one minute before the interval, which is not always an exact science. The technicians can’t always gave an exact time if the performers can’t give one themselves.

The interval shift continues where the pre-show drinks rush finished with more rush as you now have everybody needing a drink at the same time, mainly this is a blur on busy nights as your focused on seeing that queue disappear. It’s really important to me that we serve customers as quickly as possible as we know they only have a short time to enjoy their drinks before the show starts – but it’s not always easy!

So basically we go through the same routine again as before the show. Then wait for the show to end. When the show is ended hopefully we get a decent turn of customers for drinks. This trade was very poor when I started but people have seemed to enjoy staying on for a drink after the show more, I think it’s mainly down to the more relaxed atmosphere the bar has when trade is not as hectic. From here it’s a slow wind down to the night, clean up close up and home.

On the odd occasion we have a late licence, to allow the cast to have a drink after a big show. I’m not actually working on the bar, after speaking to Shona I offered to lock the building up so that whoever was on front of house could go home at there usual time. This is probably what I enjoy most about working at the Maltings is that I’m not totally restricted to working behind the bar. I am able to help out in other areas of the building and all the staff are the able to do likewise. With this thinking all the staff try and help each other out where they can which makes the Maltings a fairly pleasant place to work, in my book.

New Website Launched!!

Yes, after a lot of sweat, blood and some tears, our new website has been launched - and you're on it!

Our new website allows you to:

- see all of our upcoming shows, films, and events - with new events added as soon as they go on sale

- buy tickets online through our partner tickets.com - just click on the red 'Buy Tickets' button on any show page

- create a free and simple account with us to receive our e-newsletter, rate shows and leave reviews for other users

- find enhanced information about The Maltings including details on our classes, workshops and other events

- visit our new blog, where we talk directly about our work and you can leave comments for us and others

- visit our twitter, facebook, flickr and trip-advisor sites to leave reviews, view images etc

- recommend our shows through other social media including twitter and facebook, as well as emailing details to your friends

Obviously, we continue to update information on the site - we are working hard to post information as quickly as we can, so do be patient with us.

Enjoy - and remember to bookmark our site to make sure you keep up to date with all of our 700+ shows, films, workshops, classes and other events.

Best wishes,

The team at The Maltings