Chichester Festival Theatre Chichester Festival Theatre Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, Sussex, England, is a theatre designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. The smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989. The inaugural Artistic Director was Sir Laurence Olivier, and it was at Chichester that the first National Theatre company was formed. Chichester's productions would transfer to the NT's base at the Old Vic in London. The opening productions in 1962 were: "The Chances" by John Fletcher (first production 1638) which opened on 3 July; "The Broken Heart" (1633),
The Old Vic Theatre director Sir Peter Hall arranged for the progressive folk-rock band Gryphon to première "Midnight Mushrumps", the fantasia inspired by Hall's own 1974 Old Vic production of "The Tempest" starring John Gielgud for which Gryphon had supplied the music. For two years prior to the departure of the National Theatre company, Toby Robertson, director of the Prospect Theatre Company, sustained a campaign that the Old Vic should make Prospect its resident company. For the Old Vic, Robertson's overtures proved increasingly hard to resist in the face of poor box office returns achieved by productions staged by other visiting companies; against