The Darlington Civic Theatre is a Grade II listed Edwardian style theatre in the centre of town. It was opened as the New Hippodrome & Palace of Varieties in 1907. its first director was the Italian Rino Pepi, an actor and impersonator, who married into English gentry and changed jobs for something a bit more 'respectable'.

It was very successful until Pepi’s death from lung cancer in 1927. His ambition was to have the biggest star of the time, Anna Pavlova, to perform in ‘his’ theatre, and she performed in a matinee en route to Scotland – he was too ill to attend and died on the same day.

With the cinema taking away business, the theatre fell on hard times and closed briefly in the 1950’s. It re-opened thanks to the hard work of the local Operatic Society, and following a name change, turning it into a public company and some years down the line, it is now a flourishing regional theatre, hosting touring national and international productions – big musicals is what the good people of Darlo like and where the big business to keep it running is nowadays.

There are ghosts said to frolic about in the theatre – notably of Pepi himself, his Pekinese dog, and a few other characters.

The geeky bits
Shot quietly and discreetly using a Fujifilm S5 pro on Film Simulation Setting 1a,1b and 2 at 400ISO, using walls to bracket the camera in and my extremely steady hand :). Nice people up here not minding if you wanter off a bit or open a door here and there... respect the old buildings, and do not do any harm, is my motto. Little postprocessing in Adobe Lightroom2, some cropping, framing, sharpening, TTV overlays and selective blurring in PSE3.