Displaying items by tag: Theatre
THE KIBWORTH THEATRE
The Kibworth Theatre is believed to have been situated on the turnpike road in Main Street, Kibworth Harcourt during the 18th and 19th centuries. The exact location has not been confirmed but is baelieved to have been to the rear of 25 Main Street. This location would have been convenient to entertain passengers taking a rest break when journeying through the village on the many coaches travelling along the turnpike route. Indeed,travelling theatre players would also have also used the coaches and taken advantage of the theatre to perform plays. In addition, local residents particularly from the Dissenting Academy and the Grammar School in Kibworth Beauchamp may well have been patrons of the theatre.
Copies of two posters advertising productions at the theatre are shown below. The first on Wednesday evening 29th September 1790 was a production of the celebrated comic opera ‘INKLE and YARICO’ followed by ‘ALL THE WORLDS a STAGE’ The second was on Friday evening October 1st 1790 when a production of ‘RICHARD 111 Or, The Battle of Bofworth Field’ followed by ‘The Agreeable Surfrise’ was performed.
Attendance was not cheap, the posters shows prices for both productions at 2s for the Pit and 1s for the Gallery. Possibly these prices would have been unaffordable many local residents.
On the evening of 28th October 1802, the theatre produced the plays ‘School for Scandal’ a 1781 comic opera to music by Samuel Arnold and a libretto by John O'Keeffe along with an American romantic comedy ‘Gretna Green’ written by Grace Livingston Furniss.
It was believed that no poster for this production had survived until one was recently discovered in the papers of Rev. Thomas Thomas at the Northamptonshire Record Office.