Plans to lease the Byre Theatre to St Andrews University have been condemned as “catastrophic” for professional theatre in the town by actors’ union Equity.
The revered organisation has challenged the university’s rescue package for the award-winning venue, which ran into financial difficulties last year and has since ceased to trade.
It has dubbed the plans as a ‘takeover’ which would fulfil the university’s quest for more lecture space.
Last week Fife Council’s executive committee agreed the university should be the preferred bidder to lease and run the theatre for community and university use.
The university bid won favour over plans by Fife Cultural Trust and former Byre employee Stephen Sinclair.
However, Equity said it was the only one not constructed around continued use of the theatre as a producing house.
Equity’s Scottish secretary Lorne Boswell slammed the plans, saying: “This is not a rescue, it is a takeover by the university, who clearly state that they need more lecture space in the town centre.
“It would be catastrophic for the town of St Andrews to lose its producing theatre and it will be seriously damaging for the wider theatre community in Scotland.
“If you read the university’s plans to convert it into a lecture theatre for its music department you can quickly see there is no budget allocated to produce drama in the future.”
A university spokesman said The Byre had not been a producing theatre for the best part of a decade.
He said: “The university’s proposal does not represent the loss of a producing theatre. More recently what it has been is a closed theatre.
“There is no necessary conflict between teaching and performance. The use of the venue during the day for lectures and music rehearsal is simply a prudent move towards a viable, mixed-use theatre: one that, most importantly, has its doors wide open to the whole community.”
Mr Boswell claimed further scrutiny was necessary and pointed out the theatre had been built after a public fundraising campaign in the town, which included £4 million from the National Lottery.