My local theatre, seen from Clopton Bridge across the River Avon.
Well, not local; it's ~250 km and ~three hours from home in Lancaster, but in recent years it's the venue we've visited most frequently; 3-5 productions here per year, alongside 1-2 visits to each of 2-3 other theatres per year, including the also-excellent The Dukes, our literally local theatre.
Apart from temporary festival pavilions, Statford's first permanent theatre dedicated to the town's most famous former resident was the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.
Commissioned in 1875 as a recreation of a Tudor playhouse, the ~700-seat theatre was designed by William F. Unsworth – in a fashionable Victorian 'redbrick Gothic' style, obviously – and opened in 1879 on a riverside site (donated by brewer Charles E. Flower) which had previously been occupied by the Rotunda of David Garrick's 'Shakespeare Jubilee' in 1769.
The dramatic building, much-modified inside, is still evident as the south-western end of the current complex though from this angle the vane-capped roof is mostly hidden by a tree, unfortunately, and the 1881 library/art gallery wing is on the far side.
Home of the New Shakespeare Company from 1919, the theatre received a prestigious Royal Charter of Incorporation in 1925 but was gutted by fire on 6 March 1926.
The open competition to design a replacement was clearly won by 29-year-old and, remarkably, female architect Elisabeth Scott. The resulting Dutch-influenced Modernist (i.e. Art Deco) building, adjoining the ruined one, opened on 23 April (Shakespeare's birthday), 1932. The exterior, featuring allegorical reliefs by Eric Kennington, and public areas of the interior were widely praised, but the auditorium itself was less popular. However, barely modified, the theatre was in constant use until 2007, from 1961 as the 'Royal Shakespeare Theatre', home of the renamed 'Royal Shakespeare Company'.
Meanwhile the original part of the building, which at some point had become a conference centre, was converted back to theatre use in 1983 by Michael Reardon, opening in 1986 as the Swan Theatre, its thrust stage and galleried 461-capacity (not all seated!) auditorium specialising in the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries, other European playwrights and, occasionally, Shakespeare. To refine my earlier statement: I visit the Swan regularly, but have only ever visited the RST auditorium three times.
Between 2007 and 2010, both theatres were closed for drastic restructuring of the Grade II* Listed complex, unifying the backstage and public areas with a new four-storey glazed entrance colonnade, a rooftop restaurant and a 36m-tall tower (I'm not absolutely sure of its purpose). Changes to the Swan Theatre optimised technical facilities and re-carpeted/re-upholstered the auditorium, but the RST was radically remodelled from a traditional (well, 18th-20th Century) proscenium format into a 'one room', 1,060 seat theatre with a deep thrust stage, finally realising the intention to partially-reproduce a Tudor layout and near-halving the distance of the furthest seat to the stage from 27 m to a mere 15 m.
Built in 1480, Clopton Bridge predates Shakespeare, but Tramway Bridge, in the foreground, 'merely' dates from 1826; Grade II Listed, it's now a pedestrian bridge.
