Hull Truck Theatre's 50th anniversary season includes play about its own origins

It is impossible to hear the story of the impossible dream that occurred in Hull in 1971 and not think of the Players in Hamlet who turn up at court to perform ‘comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’. It feels like Mike Bradwell and his merry bunch were born of the same spirit.

This year Hull Truck, like Sheffield’s Crucible, celebrates its 50th anniversary: there was clearly something special in the Yorkshire water half a century ago; it is remarkable that two such significant UK theatre buildings were born in that year.

Both the Crucible and Hull Truck came out of the pioneering spirit that was around at the time, but it’s fair to say that Hull Truck had a more punk outlook – that founder Mike Bradwell would go on to run the Bush Theatre in London makes perfect sense.

But rewind 50 years and little made sense about what was about to happen, not least Bradwell’s logic on which the theatre company was based. He came to Hull to set up a theatre company because the ‘rents were cheap and social security were unlikely to find us any real jobs’. Those who were around in the 1970s and early 1980s often reminisce that ‘the dole’ was the biggest funding source of the arts in the UK at the time.

“The idea of starting a theatre company in one of the most economically deprived areas of the UK is a testament, I think, to his drive, energy and passion,” says Mark Babych, the man who is the current leader of the organisation that grew out of Bradwell’s passion all those years ago. He made it work when absolutely everybody told him he couldn’t.”

When the story gets told it does feel like one of those apocryphal accounts of an anarchistic past when dreams and passion were all that one needed to live on, so the deeply humble beginnings of Hull Truck bear repeating. Bradwell moved to Hull in 1971 and found a building, 71 Coltman Street, in which to base himself, a group of fellow actor-theatre-makers and decided to become a company.

The admin office was a telephone box on the street outside. Children of the Lost Planet, the company’s first play, was rehearsed in the upstairs of the Coltman Street building which was clearly a squat in all but name. Why Hull Truck? Because the company toured its shows out of the back of a truck.

For today’s artistic director of Hull Truck, Mark Babych, you can’t really imagine a more challenging set of circumstances in which to be celebrating the significant anniversary, but it seems somehow appropriate that he has had to lead the building through one of the greatest crises British theatre has faced in decades in order to celebrate this birthday.

“I could not have a better team to work with as we go into this year,” says Babych. “The one thing everybody shares is the determination that we don’t want our ambition to slip backwards in any way. We are making cautious decisions of course, but we all agree that we need to hold on to our ambition and honour the spirit Hull Truck was established with to begin with. We’re programming some pretty sure bets, but we’re also continuing to encourage artists to come to us with vibrancy and new ideas and we’re determined to make that part of this year’s celebrations.”

It might seem a little cocky to talk about ‘sure bets’ in theatre at all and certainly in a time of Covid, but to be fair to Babych a new play by Richard Bean about the beginnings of Hull Truck being staged at Hull Truck in its anniversary year – I mean, that is about as safe a bet as you’re going to get these days.

Bean is of course a Hullensian who grew up watching the early Bradwell work before moving to London and beginning his own career as a playwright. His highly regarded early work garnered impressive reviews and then in 2011 the National Theatre staged One Man, Two Guvnors, sending him into a stratospherically different league. His return to Truck is already hugely anticipated, a return which sees his play 71 Coltman Street receive its world premiere in February, beginning the year’s festivities.

There will also be world premieres from John Godber, who will reimagine his hit Teechers for a modern audience, Amanda Whittington, who completes her Ladies Day trilogy and a new stage adaptation of cult Scottish poet Ivor Cutler and award-winning illustrator Helen Oxenbury’s children’s book Meal One plus work from emerging new writer Lydia Marchant.

“The theatre is an extraordinary place and a lot of people have a huge amount of pride that it is here in Hull and a real love for the theatre,” says Babych.

“It’s important that we honour that as we celebrate this year. We’re really proud here in the building of the fact that we haven’t lost anyone over the last two years through redundancies, although it could have been entirely possible. I think it has all made us more determined than ever that what is important here is what happens over the next 50 years. We need to look at our place in the city and make sure that we continue to be valued as we should be and that means making sure we’re looking to the future.

“To have reached 50 years is an incredible milestone and it feels like the perfect occasion to reflect on the past and finally tell the theatre’s origin story while also showcasing our vision for the future via Hull’s phenomenal new talent.”