Theatre Royal is delighted to announce a new partnership with Finborough School which will be this year’s pantomime sponsor. Theatre Royal produces its own in-house pantomimes, directed by Owen Calvert-Lyons which are synonymous with Bury St Edmunds. Their 22/23 pantomime The Legend of Robin Hood has recently been nominated for four awards at the UK Pantomime Awards.

Finborough School is an independent day and boarding school situated on the outskirts of Stowmarket, Suffolk. Finborough is passionate about the Performing Arts and believes that learning music, dance, and drama has wide-reaching benefits for young adults, providing them with the tools to think creatively, innovate, and appreciate diverse cultures and backgrounds. The school is currently building a Performing Arts Centre comprised of a state-of-the-art 200-seat capacity theatre, two dance studios, changing rooms, and conference facilities.

“At Finborough, our children are immersed in performing arts opportunities from their earliest beginnings in the nursery at age 2 through to their emergence as exceptional young men and women at eighteen. The incredible power of performing arts to inspire and build the character needed for our children’s best lives is why we invest in such a rich vein of theatrical opportunities for our amazing students at Finborough. This partnership with Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds is a testament to our commitment to the performing arts and our belief in the power of culture to enrich the lives of our students and the wider community.“

Steven Clark, Headteacher of Finborough

 

Theatre Royal is at the very heart of Bury St Edmunds and Suffolk’s cultural offering, both as a community theatre and heritage site. The annual pantomime is seen by over 24,000 people with many attending year after year. Over the run of The Legend of Robin Hood, Theatre Royal issued 5,035 school tickets to schools across East Anglia, entertaining and inspiring young minds across the counties. Theatre Royal’s in-house pantomimes include a young cast of children from a wide range of local schools from in and around Bury St Edmunds, many of whom visit the pantomime and are inspired to audition for the following year. This new sponsorship of Theatre Royal’s pantomime, Snow White, provides a fantastic level of support for the organisation and its work, strengthening the existing much-valued and long-term sponsorship support it already receives from businesses across the region.

 

“We are delighted to begin working with Finborough School, as they sponsor our legendary pantomime. This will be a strong partnership, linking the two organisations closely so that we can uniquely support one another . We’re enormously grateful to Finborough School for this investment in the pantomime,  our biggest annual in-house production. Our sponsors are hugely important to us. Theatre Royal is a registered charity, heavily reliant upon private support, and income through sponsorship is crucial to enable us to remain financially robust and continue to offer all that we do for the community of Bury St Edmunds and West Suffolk.“

Emma Suckling, Head of Development at Theatre Royal