It’s 2021, the year that Mainstream Theatre Arts will celebrate its 40th birthday.

It’s hard for us to believe that it was forty years ago in early 1981 when founders, Theatre and Events Producer and Director Barry Carr and Choreographer Carole Hart, acquired property originally to develop and rehearse acts for international theatre and club venues. During planning it was soon decided to run a few classes in the studio’s downtime.

Since our launch, MTA has become a leading Theatre Arts Education company, with our own schools, and an outreach company that works with schools, authorities, and communities across the region.

Over the past forty years, we have seen many thousands of young people and adults pass through our schools programmes and our dance, drama, singing and musical theatre academy, some of whom have returned with their own children, and grandchildren.

Many of our past students have gone on to have careers in the performing arts, become performing art teachers or work in associated or even unrelated fields, where they have still found the techniques and life skills taught in our classes invaluable. Others came to Mainstream just to have fun, perform, and carry happy memories with them into adulthood.

During our anniversary year, we are keen to get in touch with our past students, teachers, theatre-in-education actors, and in fact anyone who has had some involvement with us over the last four decades. We would like to hear your memories and stories of your time with us, and of where life took you after Mainstream. We would also like to share some of these stories over the year, so please don’t by shy, we want to hear from you even if you would prefer to remain anonymous. Drop us a line at [email protected] or [email protected] or contact us through one of our social media channels.

Last year was difficult for everyone, but the performing arts industry has been particularly hard-hit as it is fundamentally an interactive social bonding experience involving lots of people in the same room together, not scattered two metres apart or at the other end of a Zoom call.

So we hope we can soon celebrate properly in the way we know best—by putting on shows—but we still have plenty of other exciting things planned for this special year, and as soon as we are able to have a real theatrical blow-out, you can bet we’ll be making a big song and dance about it.