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How it all started.

Drama Unlimited has been going since 1978. It started life as an amateur dramatics group with the members all working at Brown Muffs Department Store, Bradford (if you remember this place your older than you look!). The main aim of the Group was to put a production on and raise money for a local charity, this remains the aim to this day.

After two "serious" productions they turned their hand to doing Pantomimes*, for fuller details of the productions see the "Previous Productions" section. The group has seen many changes over the years including name changes and venue changes these are detailed below.....Now pay attention there will be a test afterwards!!

* Note for our non-UK visitors a Pantomime involves a woman playing the leading man who ends up marrying the leading lady, while a man plays a woman as a man and marries one of the other men in the cast! Hope you got all that!

Name Changes.

Firstly the name changes - starting life as Brown Muffs Amateur Dramatics the name was changed to Rackhams Amateur Dramatics in 19XX to reflect that Brown Muffs had been bought by House of Fraser (yes the same people who own Harrods in London).

A few years later in 19xx the name was changed again. This time to Bradford Retail Amateur Dramatics Society this marked the fact that a large number of the group were no longer staff at the original store, but most worked in the shops in the area. (For the fact anoraks out there the initials were BRAD which is also the first part of the name of the city where we are based - Bradford. And yes it was worked out that way!).

Finally in 19xx the name was changed again! this time to the name we are now know as - Drama Unlimited. This changed was made as it was evident that the cast was no longer primarily from a retail background (in fact we even have teachers in the cast, and, well I thought they were all very saintly - hhhm how wrong could I be after a week in a dressing room with one of them...erm I'll leave it there!) Also it was felt the image needed changing to a more "professional" sounding name as we were now at a larger venue.

Venue and Cast Size Changes.

In the beginning the group consisted of approximately xxx cast and xxx production staff(backstage/director etc.). This number has stayed fairly regular although the faces have changed(got older, uglier etc...!)

Venue wise the first productions were at ????? which held approximately XXX members of public per show. The show was on xx times in the week.

The group moved "up" to a venue called The Library Theater, this was to be home for the group for xx years, until the local council sold it! The venue held approximately 400 people a night and at first the group did 5 nights. Due to the popularity of the group this was to grow to 6 nights. The group attracted around 1800 people to see the shows.

As already mentioned the council closed the venue in 1990/91. This forced the group into making a difficult decision - move to the next largest venue in the area, or go back to a smaller venue. After a lot of heated discussions(I was there and I still have nightmares about it all!) it was agreed to move up.

This move was a big step for the group as we moved to St George's Hall, Bradford. This is a 2,500 seater concert hall (just a slight difference from 400 seater!).

The group has not looked back since the move, we now do the show for 5 nights and a matinee on the weekend. Approximately 2800 people come to see the show now.

In retrospect the group has advanced a long way in it`s 25 years, especially as the area has some other very good Amateur Groups. We still to this day work hard to meet the original objectives of the Group which is to raise money for UK charities and to this end the Cast, Production Team, Band Members and Dancers do not get paid anything we really do try and

Have Fun Helping Others

Thank you for taking the time to read all this....