Switch off the theatre

Northern Stage is changing the way it works to reflect our commitment to Energy Efficiency and our impact on the environment.

We believe that building a more energy efficient and carbon friendly world in 2009 will involve subtly changing the way we live and the things we do.

You may notice that some of our lights have blue stickers on them. This is because we believe they don’t need to be used in order to light our corridors or public areas. Turning off these lights helps to reduce our energy consumption. We have also adjusted our heating systems so that you should still feel comfortable in our auditoria whilst we continue to tackle heat-loss. Backstage we’re turning off our screens and photocopiers overnight, continuing a company-wide recycling scheme and reducing the carbon footprint of the building as much as possible.

We are constantly looking at the ways in which we programme the theatre and work with like-minded organisations, both locally and nationally, to ensure we are being as energy efficient as possible.

With greater pressures on the world, many of us will need to find new solutions to avoid meltdown by 2080. Northern Stage is committed to a more sustainable business model. We are exploring ways of using renewable energy – one of our ambitions is to use solar panels to contribute to our summer hot water requirements and air source heat pumps to make use of the heat extracted from our auditoria. We are also part of national initiatives to make our theatres greener and, in collaboration, we hope we can create a list of acceptable production materials and formalise our recycling processes.

We’re also limiting the emissions into the atmosphere in terms of the theatre’s transport, the way in which our staff travel and how our audiences might arrive, all of which contribute to our carbon footprint.

We’re looking differently at the way we live our lives and run our theatre.
We hope you will help us to achieve our aims.


“Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come – and you don’t even know it.”
Life and Fate
Vasily Grossman
translated by Robert Chandler