40 years of putting Oldham centre stage

IT started small and has had many ups and downs along the way — but as it enters its fifth decade, the achievements of Oldham Theatre Workshop cannot be underestimated.

Long-time watcher of Workshop shows PAUL GENTY considers its importance, then and now.

For a small offshoot of a big council department, Workshop has always had friends far beyond its apparent importance.

But that is only if you consider it as just another youth club, as some councillors have over the years.

Close a junior football team or a youth centre and people are up in arms. Close Workshop — something suggested more than once — and the result is a public outcry and council lobbying — not to mention a gnashing of teeth from casting agents across the country.

But that’s Workshop: around so long and with such success that it not only trains today’s performers, it trained their parents too.

And it has produced enough of today’s stars and today’s parents never to be short of celebrity and taxpayer support.

Having produced Corrie’s Anne Kirkbride and Michael Le Vell, the West End’s Clive Rowe and former “Les Miserables” starlet Gemma Wardle — those last two probably the best young singers Workshop ever reared; present-day celebrities such as Anthony Cotton and Suranne Jones, and not forgetting “Brookside” actress-turned-US star Anna Friel, Workshop has been a phenomenal force in the feelgood factor of the borough. It’s not a mistake that it has done more to make “One Oldham” than any amount of rebranding.

Productions have brought glory to the people concerned and high regard for the borough from outside, as a place happy to encourage such life, liveliness and confidence-boosting activity.

Oldham even started one of the country’s first performing arts college courses, in the Eighties, because college bosses saw the extraordinary potential of its arts-education scene.

And that’s the clincher: not everyone who goes to Workshop comes out a star.

But the confidence, discipline and team-spirit engendered by taking part in a show, or even rehearsals, has sent hundreds of youngsters into the adult world better equipped to prosper than they otherwise would have been.

Even when they were not destined to be stars, OTW nonetheless gave dozens of youngsters the chance to be around them.

The young cast of Alan Bleasdale’s TV series “GBH”, with Michael Palin, was almost entirely composed of Workshop members, who also kept up the bed occupancy rate in ITV’s “Children’s Ward” and other programmes.

None of the former “stars” of Workshop ever have anything but good to say about it, even though under its original boss, David Johnson, it was a strict, relatively unforgiving, organisation that gave little for excuses.

Today’s Workshop, under director and composer James Atherton, is a different but no less important beast.

Although it does not concentrate on getting as many youngsters as possible on TV or into professional work, it still sends a large number of graduates to drama schools and professions demanding confidence, contact skills and discipline, while still including anyone who wants to be included.

The result might not be as showy, but you could argue it is the Workshop the 21st century wants, even needs, it to be.

What the Workshop of the next 40 years will be is anyone’s guess, but let us hope there will still be one, still turning out stars — whatever in life they choose to do.


::An exhibition celebrating 40 years of Oldham Theatre Workshop is at Gallery Oldham until September 6 (www galleryoldham.org.uk)