Venue: Birmingham Repertory Theatre
Address: 6 Centenary Square
Town: Birmingham, GB

Birmingham Repertory Theatre, commonly called Birmingham Rep or just The Rep, is a producing theatre based on Centenary Square in Birmingham, England. Founded by Barry Jackson, it is the longest-established of Britain's building-based theatre companies and one of its most consistently innovative. Today The Rep produces a wide range of drama in its three auditoria (825 seats, 300 seats, and 140 seats), much of which goes on to tour nationally and internationally. The company retains its commitment to new writing and in the five years to 2013 commissioned and produced 130 new plays. The company's former home, now known as "The Old Rep", is still in use as a theatre. The origins of The Rep lie with the 'Pilgrim Players', an initially amateur theatre company founded by Barry Jackson in 1907 to reclaim and stage English poetic drama, performing a repertoire that ranged from the 16th century morality play Interlude of Youth to contemporary works by W. B. Yeats. Over the next five years the company staged a total of 28 different productions, aiming to "put before the Birmingham public such plays as cannot be seen in the ordinary way at theatres", but also performing as far afield as London and Liverpool. Their success and reputation led them to turn professional and rename themselves the 'Birmingham Repertory Company' in 1911. By September 1912 Jackson had bought a site in Station Street in Birmingham City Centre and appointed an architect to design what would become Britain's first purpose-built repertory theatre. Construction started the following month and the building - now The Old Rep - opened with a production of Twelfth Night only four months later, on 15 February 1913. The Rep's stated mission was "to enlarge and increase the aesthetic sense of the public... to give living authors an opportunity of seeing their works performed, and to learn something from the revival of the classics; in short to serve an art instead of making that art serve a commercial purpose". T