Formerly known as The Priestley, the theatre also has a studio space that has flexible lighting, sound and seating arrangements.

They are generally hard-working men and women … whose evenings are precious to them … and they are tremendously enthusiastic, even if at times they are also like all theatrical folk everywhere – given to quarrelling and displays of temperament ...These theatres are very small and have to fight for their very existence, but … I see them as little camp-fires twinkling in a great darkness.

The point is that in communities that have suffered the most from industrial depression, among younger people who frequently cannot see what is to become of their jobs and their lives, these theatres have opened little windows into a world of ideas, colour, fine movement, exquisite drama, have kept going a stir of thought and imagination for actors, helpers, audiences, have acted as outposts for the army of the citizens of tomorrow, demanding to live.

Opened by Sir Barry Jackson in January 1937, the new premises were a combined theatre and cinema called the Priestley.

In October 2001, it launched an appeal with the help of the Bradford Telegraph & Argus to raise £10,000 in order to avoid voluntary liquidation.

[6] The appeal raised over £11,000, and gave the theatre a breathing space of three months,[7] but by January it was again reported as facing liquidation.

[9] But a new board, led by Thomas Sandford, managed to secure a £40,000 bank loan, and this, together with £18,000 in donations, allowed it to stay open.

[17] Throughout, the liquidators had been looking for a purchaser for the building, with no guarantee that it would continue to be a theatre,[18][19] and in June 2014 they announced that it was to go to auction on 10 July.