No-one is better qualified on arts

With reference to last week's brief letter from Jonathan Clements BA(Hons)BArch ARB RIBA.
Inside Sheffield lyceum TheatreInside Sheffield lyceum Theatre
Inside Sheffield lyceum Theatre

I totally share his praise for Paul Allen’s vision of bringing Sheffield’s existing arts and cultural buildings into the modern age.

I have known Paul many years and there is no one better qualified to know what this city needs as far as the arts are concerned.

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His other rather sarcastic comment referred to his ‘amusement’ at the amateur dramatic societies insistence that any replacement theatre should be conventional. As president of the group it was I who made that statement, but the full statement read ‘We sell 260 seats a night at the Library Theatre. We need a conventional theatre, be it in the round or with a thrust stage, of those proportions’. This clearly does not mean traditional. I would love to see a modern imaginative building and the term ‘conventional’ was used to say that any old room with 50 chairs or a greenfield site would certainly not be the answer.

Taking off my ‘amateur’ hat I have been a professional actor for 35 years and have played every theatre space in my much loved city as a professional or amateur. Much of my training was at the Library Theatre which is very much Sheffield’s People’s Theatre, in the spirit of Mr Graves himself. I am also proud of the fact that I was a co-founder of the Keep Lyceum Live’ campaign in 1969 when no one else was interested and the council were about to buy it and demolish it – ironically for a car park or extension for the Central Library. We cannot claim credit for the Lyceum we see today but our seven-year campaign saved it from demolition and secured its listed building status – but wait – the Lyceum is very traditional so probably Mr Clements would not have approved.

Roger Bingham

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