My first visit to the RST in Stratford was totally magical - Ianburr, Member

I first went to Stratford in the Summer of 1985 , when I was 17. I’d seen Hamlet (Roger Rees), Richard the Third (Antony Sher!) and Henry V (Kenneth Branagh !) in the Newcastle season (I was living in my native North East at the time) that transferred in the spring of 85, and was hooked. My first visit to the RST in Stratford was totally magical though, that Summer, for Bill Alexander’s 1950s set Merry Wives of Windsor with Peter Jeffrey and Nicky Henson. I remember first walking into the RST circle and being blown away by the legendary space - the theatre of Alan Howard’s Kings, Peter Hall’s Wars of the Roses, David Warner, Peggy Ashcroft, Scofield and Peter Brook and most recently Adrian Noble, all the productions I’d suddenly read about and seen black and white photographs of. I remember the bare brick walls at either side of the massive wide stage and the empty, huge auditorium. The show was brilliant too, still my favourite production of the play. That visit I also saw Juliet Stevenson in As You Like It and Howard Davies’ Troilus and Cressida, still my favourite RSC production. I subsequently went to live down the road in Warwickshire and went to watch the RSC, usually standing at the back of the stalls for a fiver , for the next seven years, seeing everything they did. I now work in the theatre, for FOH at the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, and have worked on the same Companies as many of the actors, directors and designers who I watched over so many years. In 2011 I was privileged to work FOH and be a part of Peter Hall’s 80th Birthday Celebration at the National - every Artistic Director of the RSC being present and most of the founding members of the Company.

Amazing experiences.