[2] The Citizens Theatre is based in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, and produces a breadth of work, from professional productions for its main auditorium and studio spaces through to an ongoing commitment to creative learning and engaging with the community.

Previous Citizens productions directed by Hollands include "Hamlet", "Waiting For Godot", "Othello", "Beauty and the Beast", "The Caretaker", "Nightingale and Chase", "The Fever" and "Ice Cream Dreams", a ground breaking work which used community actors, people in recovery and professional actors to explore Glasgow's history during the "Glasgow Ice Cream Wars".

Hollands' work for children and families for TAG and on tour includes Yellow Moon, " A Taste of Honey", "King Lear", "Knives in Hens", Liar, Museum of Dreams, "Meep and Moop" and The Monster in the Hall.

Previous Citizens productions directed by Raison include Thérèse Raquin, Baby Doll, A Handful of Dust, Desire Under the Elms and Ghosts as well as Scottish classics The Bevellers, No Mean City and his own adaptation of The Sound of My Voice based on the novel by Ron Butlin.

Raison's work for children and families in the Citizens includes The Borrowers, Charlotte's Web, James and the Giant Peach, Peter Pan, Cinderella and Wee Fairy Tales.

Costumes, sets, lighting and sound are prepared by the Citizens' backstage crew and the company produces several shows each year in the main auditorium, studio spaces and for touring.

Recently, Christmas shows have been fairy tales adapted by Alan McHugh and presented in highly theatrical productions offered as an alternative to pantomime.

The Community Company performs an annual A Wicked Christmas, showcasing the group's writing and acting talents, and taking an irreverent look at all things festive.

This leaves the Grand Theatre, Leeds which opened six weeks before the Citizens (née Her Majesty's) but which had all its stage machinery destroyed 30 years ago.

[16][17] Late each Spring each pantomime, having completed its long run in Gorbals, would then tour round other venues in Scotland and England under McKelvie, who was also a shareholder and director of the Olympia Theatre, Bridgeton Cross.

When Harry McKelvie let it be known he was retiring in 1944 he offered a generous ten-year lease to the new Citizens Company, who took it up and moved from the Athenaeum Theatre in Buchanan Street.

[18] The Citizens Theatre Company was formed in 1943 by a group of theatre-minded men led by Dr Tom Honeyman and James Bridie,[19] one of Britain's leading playwrights.

[2] James Bridie, the main pseudonym used by Dr Osborne Henry Mavor, was a leading British playwright of international status, screenwriter and physician.

The Citizens became immensely popular and had full houses, including school audiences and touring to communities, and staged a wide selection of productions in its first 25 years.

[23] The board of directors included R.W.Greig, chairman of the Scottish National Orchestra, Norman Duthie, chartered accountant, and Sir John Boyd, lawyer.

Playwrights in the Citizens in its first year were: JB Priestley, Robert McLellan, Paul Vincent Carroll, James Bridie, Patrick Griffin, John Wilson, J.M.

[23] Production and art directors from 1943 to 1964 include : Eric Capon, Jennifer Sounes, Edmund Bacley, Matthew Forsyth, John Casson, James Gibson, Kenneth Mackintosh, Denis Carey, Michael Finlayson, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Peter Potter, Alastair Sim, Colin Chandler, Richard Mathews, Fulton Mackay, Peter Duguid, Iain Cuthbertson, Albert Finney, Piers Hagard and Eric Jones.

After this Blakemore turned to directing, becoming co-director in 1968 after his great success with Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967), which transferred to London that year and to Broadway in 1968.

Their internationalist approach was some distance from the original vision of a national theatre but did meet the access aspirations of the 1909 manifesto, not least in a commitment to low pricing.

Havergal's production of Travels with My Aunt adapted from the Graham Greene novel of the same title, was first presented in Glasgow in 1989 and then played in the West End where it won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1993, and off Broadway in 1995.

Cordelia Oliver, a longterm supporter of the Citizens in her reviews, noted in The Guardian "Schoolchildren en masse rarely sit "Hamlet" out in silence, nor are they often roused to cheering as they did at the end last Friday.

In 1975 a flier advertising the spring season was condemned by Labour councillor Laurence McGarry for its depiction of "Shakespeare, in drag with large cleavage, painted lips, corsets, suspenders and hand on hip".

In 1977 the Lord Provost Mr Peter McCann called for the sacking of theatre bosses after a performance of Dracula which featured nude scenes he described as "kinky claptrap appealing only to mentally ill weirdos" (Sunday Express, 13 March 1977).

[25] Following these works, almost the entire tenement block which had sat in front of the auditorium was razed, leaving the Citizens' foyer as the only remaining piece[26] In an article for the Guardian newspaper, Bunny Christie described the theatre in this period as "[sitting] on its own, surrounded by potholes and puddles, everything else seemed to have been pulled down.

During the reconstruction, a limited "in the round" theatre operated on the stage behind the safety curtain, accessed via a temporary foyer located at an emergency exit[28] with a capacity of 250.

[29] The main theatre was reopened for the Christmas show, in slightly makeshift fashion due to uncompleted works,[30] as it had been identified as essential to the company's finances.

[38] During these works, the theatre closed completely, with shows from the Company taking place at Tramway[39] and projects at Scotland Street School Museum[40] (both COVID-19 restrictions permitting) in the meantime.

The foyer also features statues representing William Shakespeare, Robert Burns and four muses, music, dance, tragedy and comedy, which were originally placed on the roof of the Royal Princess's Theatre and are the work of Victorian Glasgow sculptor John Mossman.

The statues were brought down from the building after nearly a hundred years on 12 July 1977 in order to protect them from demolition work taking place at nearby Gorbals Cross.

Backstage dressing room 7 is thought to be haunted by some of its past inhabitants and the upper circle has occasional visits from a strawberry seller girl, one of the most sighted of the Citizens ghosts.