Stockport Garrick Theatre is a theatre in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, founded in 1901. In 1904 it obtained its own premises in Cobden Place, Wellington Street.

Venue: Garrick Theatre
Town: Stockport, GB

Stockport Garrick Theatre is a theatre in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, founded in 1901. In 1904 it obtained its own premises in Cobden Place, Wellington Street. It is the oldest "little theatre" in the United Kingdom, being defined as being an amateur theatre that owns, leases or otherwise has control of its own premises. In the summer and autumn of 1901, the drama group that was based at the Stockport Unitarian Sunday School on Petersgate was rehearsing a production of The Merchant of Venice. The church organist who was also directing the production and who was a qualified engineer, Edwin T. Heys, decided that to avoid the tortuous trek through the church on the floor above the playing space to get from one wing to the other, the solution would be to dig a tunnel under the stage. This he and his headstrong colleagues proceeded to do until the excavations were discovered by the authorities and put a stop to. The incensed actors gathered at the Church Coffee Tavern opposite under the chairmanship of Heys on 24 October and formed themselves into an independent dramatic literary company which they decided to call the Garrick Society. Journalist J. Cuming Walters was president. It was decided that the production in rehearsal would be the first play presented by the new society and a semi-professional director, Ryder Boys, was engaged to produce the work at the Mechanics Institute at the end of February and the beginning of March 1902. It played to great acclaim and was followed in the same year by Sheridan's The School for Scandal and then by Macbeth and The Rivals. Some of the larger scale plays were performed at Stockport's Frank Matcham theatre, the Theatre Royal. The premises on Wellington Street were used for more intimate productions and ones which had not been licensed by the Lord Chamberlain such as Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna and several works by Ibsen and Shaw. Despite the calling up of many of the society's young men during the First World War, the s