Connaught Theatre

The Connaught Theatre is a Streamline Moderne-style theatre in the centre of Worthing, in West Sussex, England. Built as the Picturedrome cinema in 1914, the venue was extended in 1935 and became the new home of the Connaught Theatre (established nearby in 1931). The theatre houses touring West End theatre productions, musicals, thrillers, dramas and children's productions. Since 1987 it has been a dual use cinema/theatre with two screens, and has a seating capacity of 512. When it opened, it was a rare example of a conversion from a cinema to a theatre: the reverse was much more common in 1930s Britain, when many theatres became cinemas. The Ritz cinema (also known as Screen 2) at the Connaught was the venue for short-lived The End of the Pier International Film Festival.HistoryThe Connaught Theatre occupies the former Picturedrome cinema, which was built in 1914 on the site of Stanmore Lodge and opened in July of that year. Its seating capacity was 850 in a single tier, with four boxes at the rear, and the auditorium was octagonal. In 1926, Swiss impresario Carl Adolf Seebold, who owned other cinemas in Worthing and who had been the Picturedrome's musical director since it opened, bought it.In 1916, Connaught Buildings were built next to the cinema, and an entrance passageway was built from the street to the Picturedrome through the new building. The Connaught Buildings (and later Connaught Hall and Theatre) seem to have taken its name from Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathern and Earl of Sussex. The new premises housed the Connaught Hall, which in 1917 became a venue for vaudeville entertainment. It was licensed as a theatre in April 1931 by Walter Lindsay, formerly a theatre director in London; the first full season of repertory theatre began in the autumn of 1932. Terence De Marney became director of Connaught and Bill Fraser became involved in the theatre.