User:ColinFine/Bradford Playhouse

Recent years
Since reopening in 1997 after the fire, as the Priestley Centre for the Arts, the theatre has suffered a sequence of financial crises, and closed or nearly closed several times.

In October 2001, it launched an appeal with the help of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus to raise £10,000 in order to avoid voluntary liquidation. . The appeal raised over £11,000, and gave the theatre a breathing space of three months, but by January it was again reported as facing liquidation.

The theatre nevertheless continued to operate throughout 2002, but in January 2003 it was announced that it was to close on the 20th of January. But a new board, led by Thomas Sandford, managed to secure a £40,000 bank loan, and this, together with £18,000 in donations, allowed it to stay open. It was relaunched under the new name of The Priestley, with the management of the building now separate from the various groups that used the building.

The Priestley faced another financial crisis in Autumn 2008, and went into administration. It was relaunched with a new board led by Jenny Wilson, reverting to its former name, The Bradford Playhouse. A grant of £51,000 from the Arts Council of England in July 2009 brought it out of administration.

In September 2011, the Playhouse went into liquidation, with debts of £300,000. A former chairman of the Playhouse, Rob Walters, himself a creditor, agreed with the liquidators Clough & Co. that his company Be Wonderful Ltd. would run the theatre under licence from the liquidators. The theatre was reopened as The Little Germany Theatre. Be Wonderful announced that the Studio would be reopened in January 2012, as the "Isherwood Studio", in honour of former member Millicent Isherwood. A year later, in October 2012, Be Wonderful had had to close the theatre, but Clare and Jono Gadsby formed a new company Takeover Events & Theatre Ltd. to lease the building for six months: it was now called The New Bradford Playhouse.

Throughout, the liquidators had been looking for a purchaser for the building, with no guarantee that it would continue to be a theatre, and in June 2014 they announced that it was to go to auction on July 10. Megan Murray, of the Friends of Bradford Playhouse, launched an appeal for funds to buy the building, and lobbied Bradford Council to declare it Asset of Community Value, which would have delayed the liquidators' ability to sell it.

In July 2014, local theatre enthusiast Colin Fine bought the theatre from the liquidators, with the intention that it continue to be developed as a theatre. Takeover Events & Theatre continue to manage and run the theatre.

Notes and references
Saved here for possible future use:


 * http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/1998/02/26/8079438.Theatre_s_act_of_defiance/
 * http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/1998/09/01/8073802.61_years_as_Bradford_s__leading_lady_/ Jean Oldfield
 * http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/archive/1999/01/25/8069025.Centre_s_still_blazing_a_trail/