Derry's Millennium Forum ‘forced closure’ this summer due to nearby works

During a deputation to Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Business and Culture Committee, the Forum’s Chief Executive David Mr McLaughlin, said that while the theatre will not be closed and can continue daytime programming, the public realm works at Bank Place will mean there will effectively be a ”seven week forced closure over a busy summer period” for evening shows.

Mr McLaughlin said the works will lead to a lack of high-profile performances, while putting the theatre “on the back foot” financially.

“We can’t put on any performances because they’re closing Bank Place and none of the shows would be able to get up to offload and put sets into the stage,” he said.

“But,” he added, “we will continue our summer projects.

“We want to do a lot of that in the community again this year but it is going to cause us problems and it puts us on the back foot, because financially we don’t know where we’ll stand from a profit and loss point of view, having lost those seven weeks, with the number of large-scale productions that we were planning to put on.”

UUP Alderman Darren Guy noted that August was usually a “quiet period” for the theatre in terms of evening shows, and asked how much trade could potentially be lost.

Mr McLaughlin said there were a number of high-profile productions that were interested in performing at the Forum in the summer, and his team have been trying to develop a summer programme since reopening after Covid.

He said: “We did a big West End musical back in 2022 -Six, which was the story of the Wives of Henry VIII – and it was extremely successful in August.

“July is a bit more youth -orientated, so in previous years we had done our youth musical and had developed that very, very strongly.

“We didn’t do it last year and we probably will not be doing it this year, but we’re investigating possibilities of trying to do it this summer and we may very well try and do the youth musical again.

“We will be working on a business plan over the next few weeks with regards to what we think we will potentially lose over those seven week, but we have a wage bill which works out at around about £26,000 a week.

“So for those six or seven weeks there won’t be any income coming in so we need to try and balance that off now.”

Andrew Balfour,

Local Democracy Reporter.