Marina Theatre

The Marina Theatre is at the cultural heart of the Lowestoft, Waveney and Suffolk community

We deliver a wide range of shows, films, events and community activities, bringing in a diverse range of audiences of around 80,000 per year.

The Marina Theatre is a registered charity and whilst our passion and imagination is almost unlimited, the same is not true for our resources. Support from our Audience, Donors, Community, Partners and Funders is essential to enable us to continue our work.

Over the next 5 years we aim to:

• Provide a cost effective and varied programme of entertainment and cultural activities for the people of Lowestoft and beyond.
• Ensure a varied and high-quality live stage programme that reflects the Theatre capabilities and the demands of audiences.
• Ensure the future of the Marina Theatre as a live performance venue for the region.
• Maximise the potential of the Marina Theatre to present further touring productions and work in partnership with other venues.
• Developing, promote, maintain and advance community engagement in the arts and culture and raise the theatre’s profile in delivering such outcomes.

In developing our programme we aim to:

• Create regional and national co-producing consortia that will deliver high-quality mid-scale touring and musical theatre to Marina audiences – responding to expressed audience desires.
• Strengthen our relationships with commercial producers and promoters and further affirm the Marina as an established and regular receiving venue for the presentation of mid-scale drama and musical theatre.
• Widen our networks of comedy promoters and establish the Marina as a venue for comedy try-outs and as a ‘go-to’ regional venue for established comedians on tour.
• Maintain and where viable, deepen our relationship with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as the corner-stone of our classical music offer and seek to supplement this by widening a complimentary live-screening programme of opera and classical ballet.
• Shift our presenting model away from single performances to longer runs.
• Explore the viability of a shift in our music programming to balance out the ratio of tribute acts with more original music.
• Develop further our relationships with a range of community-based theatre organisations to strengthen our position as a community arts hub.
• Maintain our commitment to a mainstream film programme with around the same number of screenings each year (around 250) which attracts audiences of all ages and backgrounds as well as an extended programme of live screenings of large-scale theatre productions from the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company and others. To explore opportunities to partner with established art-house cinema organisations with a view to becoming a satellite co-presenter.