Theatre in Darlington

Darlington has a rich theatre heritage, and a brilliant theatre offer, including great facilities and programmes at Darlington Hippodrome, The Hullabaloo and The Majestic Theatre.  Many fantastic individuals, organisations, and enterprises have developed or shared fantastic theatre here.  As part of a Strategic Touring Partnership co-ordinated by Battersea Arts Centre, Luxi brought the fantastic Jabberwocky Market programme to Darlington between 2013 and 2018, with productions shared in diverse locations including boxing clubs, hair salons, hotels, and pubs. 

Darlington based ODDMANOUT developed Encountering the Other, exploring the realities and possibilities for young woman, alongside The Market Theatre Laboratory in South Africa, and six young people from South Africa alongside six from England, worked together to share this new production on stage in Darlington and Johannesburg in 2017. 

More recently Creative Darlington supported a performance of Mike and Millie Go to The Seaside, a dementia-friendly production by Smashing Mirrors Theatre at Darlington Hippodrome, and the development of Beyond Caring, a powerful play by Christina Castling that took ‘a frank, humorous and heartbreaking look at life behind the doors of a care home’, at The Hullabaloo. 

More recently we’ve also been one of those supporting Theatre Hullabaloo’s fantastic family friendly Hullabaloo in the Park festival in South Park, and contributed to Darlington for Culture’s Small Grants programme which backed many voluntary and youth theatre groups productions, the Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre (Darlington & Co Durham) CiO in bring Open Clasp Theatre Company’sLasagna here in 2023, producer Chloe Stott in programming youth theatre workshops to compliment Rachel Stockdale’s performances of Fat Chance in Darlington, and performances of Daisy Donald at The Hullabaloo, adapted from Jade Byrne’s five star book.

Creative Darlington welcomes enquiries from those interested in developing new productions or sharing theatre in Darlington. We believe theatre in Darlington offers a place to dream, explore ideas, challenge conventions, escape the everyday, and engage people of all ages.