THE THEATRE ON THE STEPS
In about 1960 the Congregational Church situated on Stoneway Steps and known for generations as the Stoneway Chapel came onto the market as a result of the merger of its members and those of the Methodist Church which is on Cartway. They became known as the United Reformed Church.
After two years a company of enthusiastic amateur actors and interested townspeople, under the leadership of Mr Peter Taylor, began negotiating with the church authorities for the purchase of the building. By the end of 1962 the deal was arranged and work began both on the raising of the capital needed with stage productions and coffee mornings, jumble sales, etc., going on in parallel with the work needed to convert the building into the small but intimate theatre it has become. This last effort involved stripping the interior of pews, pulpit and organ, these items finding new homes in other churches both near and far. Apart from taking all these items up the stairs, the conversion also required that a lot of material had to come down as well. The earliest requirements of course were for sand, cement, bricks, plaster and plasterboard, and even a thirty foot rolled steel joist had to be carried slowly down and manoeuvred carefully through the front doors and then lifted into position in the foyer until it supported the floor of the 'Green Room' above.
A complete iron fire escape was manhandled down and into position for use as an emergency exit below the theatre. The internal staircase was also rebuilt using some of the redundant timber from unwanted pews. The early switchboard and stage lighting equipment was purchased from the Midland Institute, which was part of the old centre of Birmingham, which became redundant as bulldozers moved in. The theatre curtains also came from the same source.
The first set of seats came from the Odeon Cinema at Coseley, situated on the Wolverhampton-Birmingham 'New Road'. Volunteers arrived early on a Sunday morning to start stripping the complete circle of about 200 seats, the only lights being the emergency lights set high overhead. With split nails and sore knees and bumped heads from unscrewing hundreds of woodscrews, the seats were loaded and transported back to Bridgnorth where they were unloaded, taken down the steps, and stacked in the theatre ready for installation.