Courtyard Theatre

The Courtyard Theatre opened in July 2006 to provide the Royal Shakespeare Company with an equivalent sized auditorium while significant works were being undertaken to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The Courtyard was designed to be a temporary building constructed adjacent to The Other Place (formerly the RSC's studio space). The Other Place itself being temporarily transformed to provide foyer space, cloakroom, bars, dressing rooms and rehearsal space for the Courtyard. The Courtyard's external walls were constructed with recyclable Cor-ten A steel sheets to create a soundproof auditorium – a contemporary-style building within the Conservation Area. Inside the Courtyard seated 1,048 in three galleries and provided a full-scale working prototype for the new RST's thrust stage auditorium. It was expected that once the transformation of the RST was completed (2010), the Courtyard would be dismantled and The Other Place returned to studio use. However, planning is currently underway to retain the existing structure of the Courtyard Theatre and remodel its internal space to create an exhibit to make over 30,000 costumes available to the public as well as providing a new flexible small studio venue. The new facility will be called The Other Place and is scheduled to open in 2016.