News
greenroom 25
Published 01.09.08
Paving the way for alternative performance in the 80s, greenroom is now one of Europe’s leading centres for extraordinary new performance. CREATIVE Times spoke to Artistic Director, Garfield Allen and General Manager, Ali Dunican about the centre’s first and next 25 years…
greenroom began life as Radiator, a nomadic organisation created by Jeremy Shine, giving alternative artists a voice and an audience. “We served audiences not previously catered for, with an appetite for stand-up comedy, world music, international and queer performance,” explained Ali.
In 1987, two Victorian railway arches underneath Oxford Road train station provided greenroom with a permanent base. Here, greenroom has built-up a reputation for being the place to come to see something out of the ordinary. As Manchester has progressed as a city, so have public perceptions.
“The fringe work of the early years has now become mainstream,” said Ali. “Everyone’s diversifying now, the Library Theatre and the Royal Exchange are both engaging with more emergent and more experimental performance,” added Garfield, “I think we’ve influenced that.”
Over the years they’ve changed the way they work with artists. In the early days, a performance would often come in on a short-run as part of a tour. “Now we engage with activities at their embryonic stage,” explained Garfield, “we support it, and it goes out into the big wide world and survives on its own merit.”
And, where Radiator once travelled from venue to venue in the city, greenroom now reciprocates, providing a home for other roving festivals such as Manchester Jazz Festival and Queer up North.
The anniversary provided an ideal time for the centre to commission Reform Creative to create a new brand identity. Reform’s Paul Heaton said: “We used 3D type to represent space and dimension, whilst the positive and negative type depicts the varied, and sometimes opposing, events that appear at greenroom.” Reform are also designing a window display for the centre’s Artist Family Tree project, which will track everyone who has been involved with greenroom over the past 25 years. Ali, looking forward to seeing the public’s reaction, said, “We think it’ll stop people in their tracks on Whitworth Street West!”
Looking to the future, Ali concluded, “People have natural curiosity about the new and the unusual, and as long as that continues, there will always be a place for greenroom.”
For full details of greenroom’s anniversary programme, including their very own pantomime, visit their website.
