Stephen Joseph Theatre's 70th birthday
- Alan Hulme
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre turns 70 this summer and will celebrate in style with a gala afternoon on July 13, featuring stars who have worked there over the years.
The gala will be hosted by EastEnders actress Laura Doddington, who performed at the SJT regularly between 2004 and 2012. The show will feature extracts from some of theatre’s favourite plays across its seven decades, performed script-in-hand by some of its favourite actors, including:
Tamzin Outhwaite (Eastenders), who was in the chorus of They’re Playing Our Song at the SJT in 1996 and returned in 1997 for a revival of Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends.
Christopher Godwin, who first joined the SJT in 1971 to play Leonard in Time and Time Again and has returned many times, becoming one of the very few actors to have performed at all three of the theatre’s homes.
Andy Cryer, who was born and raised in Scarborough and started his professional career there as a 14 year old in 1983, playing the title role in The Winslow Boy. He has performed at the SJT many times, most recently in Alan Ayckbourn’s Constant Companions in 2023.
Jacky Naylor, who first appeared in Scarborough in John Godber’s Lost and Found in 2012 and last year was in The Whitby Rebels.
Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong, who was in Alan Ayckbourn’s 2021 show The Girl Next Door – the theatre's first full production post-pandemic.
Valerie Antwi, who was the "material girl" in the first of the SJT’s off-the-wall adaptations of Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors (more or less), co-produced with Shakespeare North Playhouse in 2023.
Annie Kirkman, who joined the SJT company in 2023 for Beauty and the Beast and has since been seen in Dracula: The Bloody Truth, Love’s Labour’s Lost (more or less) and John Godber’s Perfect Pitch.
Charlie Ryan, who was also in Beauty and the Beast in 2023.
Artistic director Paul Robinson said: “We’re thrilled Laura can join us for this wonderful 70th birthday celebration. We’re all looking forward to seeing her back on our stage, alongside some other very special guests.”
Ambitious young theatrical pioneer Stephen Joseph opened his revolutionary new theatre on the first floor of Scarborough Library on July 14, 1955. It was the UK's first in-the-round theatre of modern times.
Theatregoers in Scarborough and beyond - including many holidaymakers - embraced the new format, and the "temporary" theatre hosted performances until 1976, when it moved to another – also "temporary" – home in a former school. That ran another 20 years, until the theatre found its current home in Scarborough’s former Odeon Cinema.
World-renowned playwright Alan Ayckbourn was a protege of Stephen Joseph, who encouraged him to both write and direct after Alan joined the company in 1957.
Ayckbourn has been associated with the theatre ever since, and became a passionate advocate and champion of regional theatre and new writing, becoming the SJT's artistic director in 1972, a position he held for 37 years until his retirement in 2009.
More info and tickets here