The Castle Theatre, Wellingborough

The Castle

(The Castle arts centre)
Address	Castle Way Wellingborough, Northamptonshire England UK
Coordinates
Owner	Borough Council of Wellingborough
Type	Multifunctional Community Centre
Capacity	503 (Main House)
Current use	Received work/produced work/functions venue/conference centre/community centre
Opened	1995
Years active	1995 to present
Website
www.thecastle.org.uk

The Castle Theatre is located in the town of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England. The theatre's main house can hold up to 503 people and hosts many productions through the year. The Castle was opened in 1995 as a community resource organisation on the site of Wellingborough's old cattle market. Its facilities include a Main House with 503 variable seats, an 89-seat studio theatre, dance and rehearsal space), a youth theatre studio for rehearsals and workshops, an Artist Residency space, a small art room, an art gallery and separate exhibition space, a meeting room and lounge space, and a bar-restaurant.Spaces are also available for business meetings and functions, wedding receptions, lectures, conferences, Christmas parties, dinners, talks, workshops, classes, and seminars,
Programming is a balanced mix of professional work as well as a home-produced professional Christmas show and a summer community production.

The Castle Theatre is also the current host of RYTF (Youth Theatre Festival "EAST MIDLANDS") from 2009. The festival celebrates all the hard work with youth theatre groups across the midlands. The festival includes professional workshops (from musical theatre - to script weighting) performances from professional performers as well as the attending youth theatres. Past and present CYT members help run the festival as the "buddy team"

In the summer of 2010 the castle re-branded itself with a new logo, changing its first logo of the castle itself to a more modern style to fit in with the new theme at the theatre.

Artistic Directors

Former Artistic Directors.

• 1994-1998 Dominic Barber
• 1999-2001 Daniel Austin (now the Director, joint Executive and Artistic, at Jersey Arts Centre)
• 2001-2004 David Bown (Chief Executive of Harrogate Theatre)
• 2004-2007 Bart Lee
• 2007-2008 Karl Wallace (now Chief Executive and Creative Director National Folk Theatre of Ireland)
• 2009–2011 Nik Ashton (No longer based at the Castle, but returned for the Christmas 2011 production.)

The role of Artistic Director has now ended at the Castle Theatre after Nik Ashton left the theatre in 2011. Castle produced shows now welcome directors from around the UK.

External links

• The Castle
• BBC Northampton
• Borough Council of Wellingborough