Regular readers will have worked out that I have a tendency to take a negative slant on any issue. I am not consciously oppositional, but it seems that this is my regular modus operandi, something I am aware of and trying, with mixed success, to change. However, an article I read the other day got me thinking in a far more positive light.
While not a huge theatre buff, as I get older, I find myself harking back to my school production days, a bit of Brigadoon and Pirates of Penzance thrown in for good measure, and increasingly enjoy attending shows at Christchurch’s new Court Theatre. For those who have not been before, you must. It really is a triumph and a huge chapeau to the team who went to enormous pains to fundraise and advocate to build the facility. Every time I go, it feels more and more like Shakespeare’s Globe, small and intimate and with the sense that the actors are performing in your own lounge.
Which is kind of the point, and precisely why I found myself a little pent up in defence of the Court after reading recently of patrons moaning about cramped seating and sometimes imperfect sightlines.
I should probably confess at this point that I am not a particularly diminutive individual. While far from Stephen Adams’ stature, I’m no midget. I’ve also spent a huge amount of time on aeroplanes and hence am not unsympathetic to the complaint that seats can feel snug. And indeed, at The Court they are. That is not a bug. It is the feature. The article detailed feedback being provided to the design company, earnest conversations about comfort and visibility, and a reassuring tone that concerns were being listened to. All of that is fair enough. No public building should be immune from critique, particularly one that people care enough about to write letters and comment online.
But reading it, I could not shake the feeling that we were missing the forest for the trees. Or perhaps more accurately, missing the play for the seats.
The Court Theatre has always been about proximity. Long before the new building, part of its magic was the sense that you were in it together, audience and performers sharing the same air, the same awkward coughs, the same moments when something landed or did not. Theatre is not meant to be a passive experience where you recline anonymously in the dark. It is a communal act, slightly uncomfortable, occasionally confronting, and at its best deeply human.
When we optimise every space for maximum comfort, perfect lines of sight and the ability to discreetly check our phones, we risk sanding off the very edges that make live performance different from streaming something at home. The occasional blocked view or the need to shift in your seat is part of the bargain. It reminds you that this is live, that you are present, that things are unfolding only once in this configuration, and then they are gone.
There is also something faintly ironic about complaining that a theatre designed to be intimate is, well, intimate. The Globe comparison is not accidental. Shakespeare’s audiences stood for hours, craning necks and jostling for position, and somehow managed to produce a body of work that has endured for a few centuries. I am not suggesting we all need to stand in the pit eating oranges, but a bit of perspective would not go astray.
Christchurch, in particular, has earned the right to celebrate this building. After years of loss, disruption and temporary solutions, the Court Theatre stands as a tangible expression of persistence and belief in culture as something worth fighting for. It was not inevitable. It was the result of people saying no, we are not done, we want a place where stories can be told up close. To then nitpick it as though it were a multiplex cinema feels slightly ungenerous.
That does not mean feedback should be dismissed. Of course, designers should listen, tweaks should be made where possible, and accessibility in all its forms matters. But there is a difference between constructive improvement and consumerist expectation that every experience conforms to our personal comfort thresholds. Sometimes the work is on us to meet the space where it is.
As I sat there recently, knees angled diplomatically, watching actors close enough to see the sweat and the flicker of doubt cross their faces, I thought back to those school productions. The sets were wobbly, the sightlines questionable, and the seats whatever the school hall happened to have. None of that mattered. What mattered was the connection, the shared suspension of disbelief, the feeling that something fragile and fleeting was happening right in front of you.
That is what the Court Theatre gives us now, in a far more polished form, but with the same underlying intimacy. If that comes with the occasional awkward seat or imperfect view, I am prepared to live with it. In fact, I would argue that if it did not, we would have built the wrong thing.
