Holloway Theatre Company (c1830 - 1943)
Dates
- Existence: 1830 - 1943
Biography
The Holloway's Theatre Company was an itenerant family theatre. The company travelled mainly around the Midlands, North Wales, Yorkshire and some part of Lincolnshire. In the early days, they followed the annual calendar of fairs and feast until the 1860s when the popularity of the fairs started to fade and they moved their business to village halls, music halls and theatres. When at the fair, they travelled a portable booth, consisting of wooden shutters bolted together and a canvas roof to shelter the audience from the weather. Two wagons drawn across the front formed the promenade where they paraded in costume to attract customers.
Throughout its history the Holloway theatre played hundreds of plays and wrote versions and adaptations of their own. The theatre thrived until the 1930s when the business started to dwindle partly due to the Great Depression and partly because of the devastating effect the cinema had on travelling entertainments. The last record of a performance by the The Holloways is at Hatton's Village Hall near Burton-on-Trent in 1943.
Found in 1 Collection or Record:
Photographs, c1890 - 1910, 19 June 1943
Black and white photographs of members of the Holloway family in theatrical and variety costume including Mona Holloway and Horace Holloway, and a photograph of Harder Jonsson.
Filtered By
- Subject: Variety X