The University of St Andrews has decided to permanently close the Barron Theatre and relegate Mermaids Performing Arts Society to the Byre Theatre Studio.

The Barron Theatre is one of only 3 entirely student run theatres in the UK. It is a unique space in St Andrews; a black box theatre with an intimate capacity of 50-60 audience members. In a normal academic year it houses over 30 productions in addition to weekly events, auditions, and rehearsals. It houses art lock ins, life drawing, and dance rehearsals. It’s often at the heart of the annual ‘On the Rocks’ festival, the largest student run arts festival in the UK. Without the Barron, this volume of quality events and experiences is just impossible. While St Andrews doesn’t have a theatre or arts program, it still has a vibrant artistic community, at the heart of which is the Barron.

In addition to being a well used performing space the Barron also contains a costume closet, set store, fully functioning workshop, and a sizeable lighting rig. Without these facilities St Andrews loses these purpose built spaces for builders, techs, and costumers to learn in, as well as the unique opportunity of running a theatre for experience in performing arts administration. In the past five years it has undergone major renovations including a state of the art retractable seating rack and a brand new floor. It is a teaching space like no other for the students who use it and many who learn their skills there go on to work professionally in performing arts, while those who pursue other avenues have strong and valuable credentials for their CV.

While the opportunity to utilise the Byre Studio Space in lieu of the Barron is generous, performers and other artists in St Andrews will still lose this rehearsal and work space. The Union and Arts buildings are already under the enormous pressure of providing rehearsal spaces, and even if Mermaids were still able to perform the same number of shows it would be incredibly difficult to secure the necessary rehearsal space.

This year has already been a struggle for performing arts in St Andrews. There has been no opportunity to hold skills workshops and so outgoing students have been unable to pass their knowledge on to new first years, who haven’t even been able to set foot in the building. With the loss of these students, combined with the loss of tangible learning spaces, the road back to the high quality student productions St. Andrews is renowned for becomes immeasurably more difficult.

If you would like to do more please email savethebarron@gmail.com and feel free to include any anecdotes about why the Barron Theatre was important to your time at university so we can pass them on to the university.