Venue: Sue Townsend Theatre
Address: 21 Upper Brown Street, Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Town: Leicester, GB

Sue Townsend Theatre (formerly the Phoenix Theatre, Phoenix Arts Centre and the Upper Brown Street Theatre) is a theatre in the city of Leicester, England. The centre hosts live shows and films of the arthouse and world cinema genres. Julian Wright is credited for his work to preserve the theatre from demolition in the 1980s and in the 2000s. In 2010, after a new Phoenix Square opened on the other side of the city centre, the space became the Upper Brown Street Theatre, a music-training and performance venue. It has since been renamed the Sue Townsend Theatre, to honour the late Leicester author and playwright, Sue Townsend. In 1963, Leicester City Council (LCC), identifying a gap in cultural provision for live performances, built a 262-seat theatre in Leicester, The Phoenix Theatre, intended as a temporary solution until a more permanent theatre could be built. The theatre's architect was Richard Bryant. The theatre's roster of directors includes Clive Perry, Michael Bogdanov, Chris Martin, Ian Giles, Sue Pomeroy, Graham Watkins, Paul Wetherby and Adrian Bean, and actors such as Nigel Bennett, Roberta Kerr, Heather Sears, Perry Cree, Anthony Hopkins and Greta Scacci. The theatre was intended to serve the Leicester community by presenting both "in house" productions and touring companies, including dance and small-scale theatre productions for Leicestershire. Notable in the touring work were productions about the travelling community and about substance abuse. The early 1980s were the theatre's most active period, when it employed some eighty people. The company included a main acting troupe, a touring company called "Flying Phoenix", and a touring dance company, "Phoenix Dance". It developed new writers, notably Sue Townsend, and premiered many productions that went on to national acclaim, such as The Hobbit and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the theatre hosted annual revues performed by the Leicester University Revue & Theatre