History of the Company
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Upcoming Performances
Born into a wealthy merchant grocer’s family in 1879, Barry Jackson founded the amateur Pilgrim Players in 1907 and went on to build an elegant 464-seat Repertory Theatre in Station St in 1913, now known as The Old Rep.
The theatre rapidly became home to one of most famous and exciting repertory theatre companies in the country, reinventing the idea of Shakespeare in modern dress, presenting many world premieres (including George Bernard Shaw’s epic Back to Methuselah in 1923) and launching the careers of an array of great British actors, including Ralph Richardson, Edith Evans and Laurence Olivier.
Available for purchase in the theatre, Clare Cochrane’s The Birmingham Rep: A City’s Theatre 1962-2002 tells the dramatic story of the company’s 1971 move from Station St into its new Broad St home, the development of its studio theatre (now the Door) as a venue dedicated to the production of new plays, and its continued commitment to present world-standard classical and contemporary drama to a demanding and increasingly multicultural audience on its main stage.