Welcome

Photo by Max Mosscrop

Photo by David Rankin

 STOP PRESS - 15 May 2012. Due to severe financial problems, the Theatre Royal Margate Trust has been dissolved and the lease repurchased by Thanet District Council and will now be run by Thanet Leisure Force.See the text of TDC's press release here



Originally posted April 2007 About ten years ago I became involved as a volunteer with the Theatre Royal Margate. I loved the place so much that, when I was made redundant from my previous retail furnishing management job, I started to spend more and more time there. Within a year of losing one job, I had a new one as Marketing Manager of the Theatre Royal, for over five years it's been the best job I've ever had!

But as you may know, at the end of March 2007, the Theatre Royal was purchased by Thanet District Council, one of the conditions of the sale was that all the staff were to be made redundant (five full time plus assorted casuals and volunteers) as it would be closing for six months and changing it's programming to more community based product.

As of today(April 11th, coincidently my 55th birthday) , I have left the theatre but the theatre has not left me, so I plan over the next few months/years to use this site as a celebration of this amazing building. I will be using some of the personal archive that I have collected, purchased or researched in my own time, to help preerve the long and glorious history of one of the oldest theatres in the country.

But let's start at the end of the current chapter in it's multi faceted life. Below are a few pictures of some of the staff and volunteers after the final public performance at 'their' Theatre Royal on Easter Monday April 9th 2007.

This site is dedicated to all those who gave their time and enthusiasm to try to make a dream work, let's hope it wasn't in vain!