Play Club

Wed, Jul 7th 2021 at 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm

Alan Tricker

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Alan Tricker’s many years of entertaining St Andreans, on stage in a wide variety of roles and as director of numerous productions, made him the Rotary Club’s choice as its non-Rotarian Citizen of the Year in 2018. He was invited back to give members a history of the St Andrews Play Club, in a splendidly illustrated talk delivered on Zoom. The Play Club grew out of a Hope Park Church drama group that found a home of its own when Alex Paterson and pals established the first Byre Theatre in what had been a farm on Abbey Street. Just like London’s Windmill Theatre, the Byre never closed during WWII because, although most of the amateur actors were called up, ‘Chas’ Marford came from London to keep it going. Alex was demobbed in 1945 and resumed his role as Chairman and Manager, overseeing the creation of the purpose-built theatre opened in 1970. He had already embarked on further developments that eventually led to the present building when he died in 1989. Alan Tricker has directed more than 40 productions for the Play Club since first being invited to do so by Alex in 1985, including Alex’s own play, ‘The Open’, each time the championship has come to the home of golf. What is now Byre Youth Theatre developed from the children’s group Stage One, founded by the late Carole Tricker and where several professional performers, including KT Tunstall, first learned their craft. Alan gave members an insight into the staging and cost of mounting a production at The Byre. In her vote of thanks, Sylvia Donaldson, herself a long-standing Friend of the Byre, echoed Alan’s hope that audiences will return as soon as the easing of pandemic restrictions permit.

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