The 80th anniversary of Gateshead’s lovely Little Theatre – and the role of the talented sisters who founded it – will be celebrated with exhibitions and special events. Cultured. North East’s Tony Henderson sent us the details.
The Little Theatre in 1948
Three sisters who founded the only theatre to be built and opened in England during the Second World War are being celebrated as the curtain is raised on its 80th anniversary.
Hope, Ruth and Sylvia Dodds transformed a vacant site near Saltwell Park in Gateshead into the Little Theatre as a permanent home for the local amateur theatre company The Progressive Players, who had started out in the 1920s.
The sisters from Low Fell had been granted planning permission in 1939 just before the outbreak of war, and the Little Theatre opened in 1943.
Now an anniversary exhibition drawing on the theatre’s archives will welcome audiences at the production of Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, which runs from January 16-21, and February 20-25 to take in the comedy drama Bothered and Bewildered.
Judith Carruthers, archivist for the 187-seat Little Theatre, said: “We have Hope, Ruth and Sylvia and their tenacity to thank for our beautiful theatre, which has given local people of all backgrounds the opportunity to take part and enjoy theatre and performance over the past 80 years.
“This anniversary is the perfect opportunity for us to celebrate their contribution. I am very excited to be able to show some of our precious archival material with a wider audience.”
A second exhibition in September and October will trace the history of the theatre up to the present.
The Little Theatre is on the Local List of buildings that have special architectural or historic interest which is an important part of Gateshead’s heritage.
It is still the home of the Progressive Players, who celebrated their centenary in 2020. It currently has around 150 members and more are always welcome.
The Progressive Players has their roots in the Gateshead branch of the Independent Labour Party, which acquired Westfield Hall in Alexandra Road to encourage cultural activities and hold political meetings.
There was a choir, a band, a socialist Sunday school and a dramatic club, which became the Progressive Players, although any political link has long since ceased.
Ruth Dodds – one of three sisters who founded the Little Theatre in Gateshead
In 1922, the drama club spent £20 on wood to build a stage which had to be movable as dances and whist drives provided the chief revenue for the hall.
At first, there was no charge for admission, although a collection was taken. In 1923 a charge of six pence was made for any seat.
In the 1930s relations with the management committee of the hall, which wanted to provide more dances and whist drives, became strained and in early 1939 the Progressive Players were given notice to quit.
It was then that, in the search for a new home, Hope, Ruth and Sylvia Dodds came up with funds to help buy the vacant site facing Saltwell Park, together with the adjoining No.3 Saltwell View for use as dressing rooms and to accommodate the Players’ wardrobe of costumes.
The contractor’s hut had appeared on the site when war broke out and the empty house was requisitioned as a barrage balloon station.
The players performed where they could, and in 1941 presented a comedy Third Time Lucky at Gateshead Town Hall, at the request of the Gateshead Entertainments for the Troops Committee.
Hope Dodds studied at Cambridge University
Work eventually started on the theatre although in early 1943 German bombs fell in Saltwell Park, blowing in the windows and the doors of the building.
But the theatre opened on October 13 with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
It would have been a triumph for the Dodds sisters.
They were the daughters of bookbinder and historian Edwin Dodds and his wife Emily, with the family occupying Home House on Kells Lane in Low Fell, where the sisters lived for the rest of their lives.
Madeleine Hope – her full name – was a student at Newham College, Cambridge, from 1904-06 where she studied history.
In 1915 the Cambridge University Press published The Pilgrimage of Grace 1535-37 and The Exeter Conspiracy, which Hope wrote with her sister Ruth, and which has been rated as culturally important by scholars.
The Pilgrimage of Grace is the name given to a series of rebellions that broke out in Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire in 1536 and quickly spread to other parts of the north, including Northumberland.
They were sparked by discontent over Henry VIII’s religious policies, especially the dissolution of the monasteries, and also unrest caused by rising prices, changes to the laws of land ownership, and opposition to the regime of Henry’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell.
Sylvia Dodds was an expert seamstress
An army marched south from York and the rebels were met at Doncaster by the Duke of Norfolk who, acting on behalf of the king, promised that if they dispersed there would be no reprisals against them and that their grievances would be discussed.
But around 200 people were eventually executed for their parts in the rebellion.
Hope edited several volumes of the Northumberland County History. She became a Quaker and was a pacifist and a socialist.
She was an active member of the Progressive Players and produced plays and made dramatic adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.
Ruth joined the Labour Party after the First World War and was elected to Gateshead Council in 1929. She was made the first woman freeman of Gateshead in 1965.
Sylvia was an expert seamstress who made many of the theatre costumes.
Hope died in 1972, aged 87. When Ruth died in 1976 the photograph albums and scrapbooks she had kept were given to the theatre and are a major part of its archive. Sylvia died in 1969.
In 2003 the Little Theatre celebrated its Diamond Jubilee, with the Progressive Players giving excerpts from plays first performed in 1943, 1953, 1963, 1973, 1983 and 1993.
Theatre manager and chairman, Robbie Carruthers, said: “We are very proud of the three sisters and take our responsibility very seriously as we look after their legacy. There is no reason why we should not be here in 80 years time.”
To find out more about what’s on to celebrate the 80th anniversary, visit the website where you can also snap up tickets for upcoming productions.