Yorkshire Theatre Newsletter (Feb 25-Mar 3)
The Hull Truck 50th Anniversary Edition
When theatre people make shows about themselves it can be bad news for the audience. But, to understand the landscape of Yorkshire creativity, it’s worth engaging with the foundation story of the venerable — indeed, world famous — Hull Truck Theatre.
The city of Kingston-upon-Hull, for the uninitiated, is a sizeable inland port on the eastern side of the county. I say ‘inland’ because although many amateur geographers mentally map it to somewhere on the North Sea coast, it actually sits in a much more sheltered position on the north bank of the tidal Humber estuary. Beyond it lies one of the most remote and desolate parts of England — the Holderness peninsula.
American readers with an interest in family history may remember the city as a staging point in the migrant journey of their Northern and Eastern European ancestors. (Boats from Holland arrived in Hull where their passengers were briefly fed and watered before being loaded onto trains that took them across the North of England to …