Place-performance relationships within the English urban context: Coventry and the Belgrade Theatre

ABSTRACT

Opened in 1958 the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry was the very first purpose-built, not-for-profit, civic, regional producing theatre. It remains exceptional in the historical record because of the utopian vision of the urban planners who established it. However, largely because of the subsequent collapse of Coventry's utopian dream in the face of major industrial and economic trauma, the Belgrade has had to fight hard both to retain its place within the city and its artistic visibility in the overall landscape of regional theatre. Positioned, as are all subsidized, not-for-profit arts organizations, within the third sector, successive Belgrade managements have had to manoeuvre between the original founding public service aspirations of social transformation and the imperatives imposed by a market economy. The result has been an attempt to create a place of convergence and coexistence for a range of disparate communities of interest representative of a constantly shifting external environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Belgrade Theatre
• Coventry
• urban utopia
• place
• regional
• third sector