Beverley’s East Riding Theatre opened in December 2014 delivering high quality drama, music and entertainment. It is a community effort, run largely by over one hundred local volunteers.
Dame Judi Dench is Patron, and international film and television actor (and Beverley resident) Vincent Regan is Creative Director and an original founder of the theatre.
The ERT receives no public funding, relying on ticket sales and corporate sponsors to sustain its overheads. Its productions to date include: ‘Hamlet’, ‘As We Forgive Them’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘A Steady Rain’ and ‘Sparrow.’ The ERT café bar is open Tuesday to Saturday 10.30 – 16.00
Beverley’s newest arts and music festival, which launched earlier this year, is expanding.
Stage4Beverley, based at the town’s East Riding Theatre, will be adding a fourth day to its programme in 2018 and with an eclectic range of musical genres being programmed, it promises something to satisfy all tastes.
East Riding Theatre has released its exciting and packed Autumn/Winter brochure to complement Hull U.K City of Culture 2017’s forward programme.
As Hull U.K City of Culture 2017 sets out in its final season to ‘Tell the World’, ERT begins the autumn with the first of a trio of Hull connected plays.
Now then! Yorkshire folk are proud of their county, and rightly so, given all the wonderful things we’ve given the rest of the world.
And a new tradition, fast catching on locally, is celebrating all that’s best about God’s Own County.
Last year, Beverley’s East Riding Theatre celebrated Yorkshire Day (August 1st), on Yorkshire Day Eve – just like we celebrate New Year’s Eve.
It’s Different For Girls is a brand new musical by all female theatre company She Productions and inspired by Hull’s own pioneering ‘garage’ 1960s girl band, Mandy & the Girlfriends. Their all-girl line-up gave them a novelty value that attracted the crowds both in their home town of Hull and at gigs in London.
The Show, directed by The Hypocrite’s (RSC and Hull Truck) Becky Hope-Palmer, with Musical Supervision from Wicked UK’s Paul Frankish and choreography by Hull Truck’s Associate Artist, Jon Beney.
Beverley’s East Riding Theatre prides itself on discovering “hidden” talent; hence the excitement surrounding a one-nighter by Canadian duo Dennis Ellsworth and Kinley Dowling.
They have been performing together for eight years while pursuing solo careers at the same time; however, 2017 marks their first real collaborative effort on record.
East Riding Theatre launches its summer long festival of engagement, inspiration and celebration with a theatre double bill of Spoonface Steinberg & Perfidious Lion.
To help showcase the fantastic young talent in the area, East Riding Theatre will be hosting a wide variety of shows by young performers this summer including, theatre, comedy, spoken word, music and much more.
STAND UP STAND UP, a brand new play by the Olivier Award-winning writer of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice Jim Cartwright, visits the East Riding Theatre on the 9th & 10th June as part of a UK tour, following its premiere at Theatre Royal Wakefield.
Produced by the Jim Cartwright Company and Theatre Royal Wakefield, and directed by Cartwright, STAND UP STAND UP is a dark comedy about a struggling comedian who forms an unlikely friendship with a tough bailiff, as they both strive to help each other achieve their dreams.
She Productions, Theatre Company in Residence at the East Riding Theatre, is back by popular demand with a new comedic review show, after the sell-out success of Beverley Does Broadway in 2015.
As an actor, no matter how hard you try, there is always one role that you know you will never get! Surrounded by an industry based on physical appearance, race, and gender, She Productions are here to break boundaries and turn typecasting on its head. MissCast is an evening of familiar songs and sketches performed in revolutionary ways.
She Productions, Theatre Company in Residence at the East Riding Theatre, is back by popular demand with a new comedic review show, after the sell-out success of Beverley Does Broadway in 2015.
As an actor, no matter how hard you try, there is always one role that you know you will never get! Surrounded by an industry based on physical appearance, race, and gender, She Productions are here to break boundaries and turn typecasting on its head. MissCast is an evening of familiar songs and sketches performed in revolutionary ways.
A play “Made in Hull” and boasting an entirely East Yorkshire cast is sure to be a City of Culture hit when Beverley’s East Riding Theatre is transformed into “Shakers” – the oh-so-trendy cocktail bar where everyone wants to be seen.
It is here we also meet Nicky, Adele, Carol and Mel, the bars long-suffering waitresses, who invite you to pull up a table, order a drink and relax in their company.
Next month sees the return to Beverley, Yorkshire, of the New Paths music festival.
The inaugural festival took place in Beverley last year and immediately established New Paths as one of the most innovative classical musical festivals in the country.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s award winning play “The Night Season”, (originally staged at the National Theatre in London), opened at Beverley’s East Riding Theatre on March 2nd and runs until Saturday 25th of March.
It is a personal favourite of the theatre’s new artistic director Adrian Rawlins, making his directorial debut at the ERT in this astonishing and beautifully conceived, staged and acted production.
After what’s been universally accepted as a hugely successful inaugural festival, the team behind Stage4Beverley has confirmed the festival will go ahead in 2018 and hopefully become a permanent fixture on Beverley’s calendar.
Sell-out concerts on all three nights of the festival, which was held at the East Riding Theatre in Beverley across the weekend of February 17 to 19, plus healthy audiences at daytime concerts and workshops has given the volunteer team behind the event enough confidence to start planning for next year.
Stage4Beverley is delighted to add to its range of musical genres some light classical music, suitable to ease us gently into the final day of the festival.
With its aim to provide opportunities for the best of local and young musical talent, as well as the international stars, this Sunday morning concert brings both local and youth talent to the fore, prior to the International Gypsy Jazz superstars performing in the afternoon concert.
East Riding Theatre’s new artistic director, Adrian Rawlins, is to make his directorial debut at the theatre with The Night Season by Rebecca Lenkiewicz which opens in March.
Rawlins, an actor on stage and screen for 30 years, (Harry Potter, Dickensian, War and Peace) has recently taken over as artistic director at ERT and launched a programme for the year which promises to be uplifting and life-affirming.
Stand-up comedian and poet John Hegley has penned a new Beverley-themed poem ahead of his appearance at the Stage4Beverley arts and music festival this month.
Called “A Spinster by Beverley Minster” it recalls a time in the 1970’s when he was starting out – his first public performances for which he received money was as a busker on the streets of the town and neighbouring Hull.
He’s a former bus conductor who achieved fame as a stand-up comedian and performance poet, but John Hegley’s first “paid” public performance was busking his songs, initially outside a shoe shop in Hull in the late Seventies.
By 1980 his “act” has transferred to the streets of London (Hegley was born in Islington) and soon after he achieved a breakthrough at London’s Comedy Store.
The Stage4Beverley Winter music festival will be presenting some of the cream of young UK talent in its February event.
Headlining their “Rising Stars” concert on Saturday 18th February, will be two time BBC Folk Award winners Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar, one of the most sought after young acts on the English Folk Scene.