The Palace Theatre of Newcastle, England was a unique building. The stage was incredibly large, almost forty feet in depth. The auditorium contained three different seating levels with the capacity to seat more than two thousand audience members at one time. Back in the theaters heyday, many stayed in the Newcastle luxury hotels in order to attend the shows and visit the city. On the first level the seating was right next to the stage, making it possible for audience members to actually reach out and shake hands with the actors. The theater had started to become run down in by the mid 1950′s. Many theaters throughout the country had already begun to shut down, however the Palace had a loyal following.
The audience were made up of mostly those from the working class, which was strong enough to provide the touring shows with a stipend of the earnings from the box office on any given night’s performance. However, the audiences could be rough, and often times noise from those causing a ruckus in the parking lot could be heard inside the theater. One of the aldermen of Newcastle was the director of the company, a private local business that owned the Palace at the time.
Stan Pell managed the stage and had himself at one time been well known for his performances with a comedy troupe during the 1920′s through the 1930′s. But by the second half of the twentieth centuries, the taste of audiences was changing. Television was becoming more popular which served to affect the businesses of the live theater companies throughout the world. Many of the historical buildings are Grade listed heritage sites, however this system of preserving historical building was not in place at that time, so the building was condemned and eventually torn down. However, many of those people still living in Newcastle today, remember the shows and the good times that decades of productions provided to the people of the town of Newcastle, England.
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