How it works
Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty
The Video
The Pitch
At four minutes to seven on the evening of Tuesday 3rd July 1962, the voice of Laurence Olivier boomed through the foyer of Chichester Festival Theatre asking the first-night audience to take their seats. No one had ever seen a theatre like it – an 'impossible theatre', strikingly modern, concrete and glass, with a vast thrust stage sticking out into the auditorium. And built against all the odds in parkland just outside a small cathedral city in West Sussex.
At seven o'clock, everyone stood for the National Anthem. Then the house lights went down and the opening words of John Fletcher's The Chances were spoken. The CFT story had begun ...
Since then, the roll call of those who’ve played to Chichester reads like a 'Who's Who' of contemporary theatre and film - Ian McKellen, Lauren Bacall, Sam Mendes, Kathleen Turner, Stephen Fry, Derek Jacobi, Joseph Fiennes, John Gielgud, Diana Rigg, just a handful of the world-class actors and actresses who have walked the stage at CFT over the past fifty years. It’s where the National Theatre company was formed while waiting for its new home on London’s South Bank to be ready; it’s where some of the most important contemporary writing has been showcased - from Lucy Prebble’s Enron to David Hare’s South Downs;it’s where careers have been made and confirmed.
Now you, too, can be part of the history of CFT. The international bestselling novelist and playwright, Kate Mosse – a Chichester girl, born and bred - is writing the anniversary book for CFT’s first half century. Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty is a decade-by-decade celebration, a love letter in words and pictures, based on interviews by many of those who’ve played their part in the enduring success of one of Britain’s most important and best loved theatres.
By pledging your support today, you can see your name printed in the book alongside the great names of stage and screen. You’ll have access to Kate’s shed, be able to keep up-to-date with her progress, and get a taste of dramas on and off the stage, scandals and success, the box office triumphs and one or two productions that didn’t quite come off!
Beautifully designed, it’s the perfect gift book for anyone interested in theatre, film, television. A one-off chance to celebrate the first fifty years of CFT and to look forward to the future.
The Excerpt
This book is a love letter.
My affair with Chichester Festival Theatre – CFT as it’s affectionately known – has lasted my whole life. I was born a few months after the foundation stone was laid in 1961 and moved to Chichester, with my parents, a couple of weeks after the first season in 1962. My father crossed the road from his solicitors’ office in West Street, offered his services to the Founder of the Theatre, Leslie Evershed-Martin, who lived opposite, and in 1966 became Company Secretary to the Board. From that moment, the theatre was part of our day-to-day lives.
CFT was where I saw my first live play, with real moving and breathing actors on a stage. It was where I first performed on stage – recorder, choir, violin, local school concerts. It was my first ‘proper’, paid job – as an usherette front of house selling ice creams and programmes during A level - and, as chance would have it, my last proper job too, as Administrative Director to Andrew Welch from 1998- 2001.
My affection for CFT, the way I feel it has always been there as a backdrop to my life, a familiar place is not uncommon. The same fondness is shared by all those interviewed for the book – actors, directors, production staff, board members, autograph hunters – as well as those who’ve supported the book and whose names are printed here too. On every page, this warmth for CFT, the sense of it being special, different, comes up time and again. It’s partly to do with the fairytale nature of the founding and building of the theatre in the first instance: the dream of a local ophthalmic surgeon and former mayor of Chichester, Leslie Evershed-Martin who, having watched a television documentary about the building of a theatre in Stratford, Ontario, decided to attempt the same in his home town and invited Laurence Olivier to be the first artistic director. But, mostly, I think the enduring affection Cicestrians feel for their ‘impossible theatre’ is down to the fact that it was – and remains - a theatre built by the community, for the community. And built on a shoestring, the art of the possible, the theatre coming to life from the bottom up, brick by brick. The ambition of it; the dazzling and brave architectural design – a modern concrete folly sitting in parkland to the north of a pretty but modest market town in West Sussex; the glory of the lighting rig above the audience’s head, ‘the night sky’; the open plan auditorium where each face is visible to the actors and to the rest of the audience; and the magnificent thrust stage, protruding like sides of a fifty pence piece, into the purple and green; and the wonderful production photographs that decorate the foyer.
In the old days, the main house foyer was black and white tiles, clean and smart but noisy. Now there’s carpet but the atmosphere, the smell of it, the hushed hubbub of the open and welcoming space, to me, hasn’t changed so very much. I remember standing there as a six year old, in red velvet party dress and black patent shoes, being taken to see The Italian Straw Hat. That sense of excitement, that sense of being on the verge of entering into a different world, has never gone away. And when one looks at the audience, any night of the week, one can catch that same glint of reminiscence on people’s faces, they too remembering the first time they came and sat, hushed, in the auditorium waiting for the house lights to go down.
So, fifty years of CFT to celebrate. The story begins here ….
Kate Mosse
September 12th 2011
The Author
Kate Mosse is an international best-selling author, playwright, broadcaster and co-founder and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize.
Her novel Labyrinth - the first of her international No 1 bestsellers - has been translated into 38 languages and published in 40 countries. It won the Richard and Judy Best Read Award in 2006 and was selected as one of Waterstone’s Top 25 Novels of the last 25 years. Sepulchre, the second in the series, was also an No 1 international bestseller, as was her novella The Winter Ghosts. Citadel, the third in the Languedoc Trilogy, will be published in September 2012. Her plays are Syrinx and Endpapers, to be performed at the Bush Theatre in October 2011 as part of the series Sixty Six Books and she's working on a major play commission for 2012.
Kate was named European Woman of Achievement for Contribution to the Arts in 2000 and is one of the UK’s most high profile campaigners for literacy and reading.
"Labyrinth is a reader's Holy Grail, mixing legend, religion, history, past and present in a heart-wrenching, thrilling tale. Eat your heart out, Dan Brown, this is the real thing." - Val McDermid
"[Mosse is] a powerful storyteller with an abundant imagination" - Daily Telegraph
"Mosse wears her learning so lightly... In this she is reminiscent of those twin goddesses of popular historical fiction, Jean Plaidy and Mary Renault." - Guardian
Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty
By Kate Mosse
This book is fully funded, but you can still pre-order the special edition below.
What you get when you support a book:
All supporters get their name printed in every edition of the book. All levels include the e-book and immediate access to the author's shed. Supporters of books that don't reach their target receive a FULL refund.
£25
HARDBACK
- 1st edition hardback - with your name printed as a patron in the back of the book
- Collect your copy at the theatre on publication
£30
HARDBACK (UK POSTAGE)
- 1st edition hardback - with your name printed as a patron in the back of the book
- postage to anywhere in the UK
£35
HARDBACK (EU POSTAGE)
- 1st edition hardback - with your name printed as a patron in the back of the book
- postage to anywhere in the EU
£40
HARDBACK (WORLD POSTAGE)
- 1st edition hardback - with your name printed as a patron in the back of the book
- postage to anywhere in the world
