Originally located in the city centre, the People's Theatre moved to its current site, adjacent to the Coast Road in Heaton, in 1962.

[4] Its first premises were in the BSP's rooms on the first floor of a building at the corner of Leazes Terrace and Percy Street in Newcastle city centre.

These theatrical productions became so popular that the dramatic society started to cast their net wider in their choice of plays to include William Shakespeare and genres such as comedy.

The theatre remained active throughout World War I, during which it formally split from the BSP and moved to the Royal Arcade, Pilgrim Street in 1915.

In 1926, the theatre gave the British premiere of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale and Rutland Boughton himself came to conduct his popular The Immortal Hour.

In 1929, the People's acquired new premises at Rye Hill in the west end of the city, where they converted an old chapel into a theatre in which they would stay until 1962, staging over 500 productions.

B. Priestley visited the theatre whilst travelling around the country gathering material for his book English Journey;[6] in it, he writes at some length about watching a rehearsal of The Trojan Women.

Both Shaw and Dame Sybil took part in a BBC radio programme about the People's Theatre produced by Cecil McGivern an ex-People's member, in 1939.

By 1955 the People's was beginning to outgrow its Rye Hill premises, and theatre chairman Arthur Kay enrolled the help of Peggy Ashcroft and John Gielgud to launch a building appeal fund.

Within five years, this allowed the purchase of the former Lyric Cinema in Heaton and a new arts centre opened there in September 1962 with Shaw's Man and Superman.

When the old and now empty Rye Hill theatre burnt down, James Garbutt a People's actor and talented artist, salvaged some charred boards from the old stage to create a replica of the new logo to hang in the Greenroom.

These include: Alan Browning, James Garbutt, Fred Pearson, Margaret Jackman, Jack Shepherd, Kevin Whately, Ralph Watson, Tom Goodman-Hill and Andrea Riseborough.

Other former People's members who have gone on to find success in related fields include pop star Neil Tennant (singer-songwriter in the Pet Shop Boys), comedian Ross Noble and BBC Radio producer Ian Gardhouse.