page_title: Brighton Open Air Theatre
section_title: Adrian Bunting
hierarchical_section_title: Brighton Open Air Theatre / Adrian Bunting
caption_attribution_description: The old bowling green in November 2013
context_page_description: Brighton Open Air Theatre, also known as B•O•A•T, is a British theatre built in Dyke Road Park, Brighton, which opened in May 2015. It has been paid for not by corporate funding or public grants, but by private donations. The theatre is the legacy of the Brighton showman and construction manager, Adrian Bunting, who died of pancreatic cancer, aged 47, in May 2013.
  In 2016, the Tatler placed the theatre in its list of the UK's six best outdoor theatres, while the Guardian included it in the 'Top 10 outdoor cinema and theatre events in the UK'. In 2017, the Brighton Open Air Theatre was number three in Curtain Call's list of the world's ten best outdoor theatres, after Shakespeare's Globe and Epidaurus. In 2019, B•O•A•T was number two in the Guardian's list of '10 great UK open-air theatres you can visit on public transport'
context_section_description: Adrian Bunting was a buildings project manager, working on the refurbishment of the Brighton Dome and designing and project managing the construction of hotels in Africa and the Caribbean. He first became involved in theatre in the early 1990s, when he created and presided over Brighton's Zincbar Cabaret. His Guardian obituary recalls, 'The Zincbar, staged every fortnight at the Basement Club in the city, was a gloriously unpredictable crucible into which both gold and rubbish were thrown: comedians, poets and situationists alike. Adrian celebrated all, rousing the audience at the end of each act with: "Wasn't that magnificent?"
   
  In 1996, Bunting created the street theatre installation The World’s Smallest Theatre, which led to a well publicised battle with Marcel Steiner's Smallest Theatre in the World when both were programmed at the Pleasance in Edinburgh. He was one of the founding members of the Upstairs Theatre Company and a regular performer with the Festival Shakespeare Company as well as a writer and performer of comedy
  and theatre. In 2011, he wrote, directed and produced the play Kemble's Riot, which cast the audience as rioters taking part in the 1809 Covent Garden Theatre Old Price Riots. The play won the Best Theatre award at the Brighton Festival that year and a five star review from Fringe Guru. It went to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012 and the New York Fringe in 2013.
  Bunting had a long-held ambition to create an open-air theatre for Brighton, and had even identified the perfect location, the bowling lawn on Dyke Road Park. In April 2013, when Bunting was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer, he learned that the bowling lawn was being closed by the council, which was looking for a new use for the space. Interviewed six days before his death, he said, 'The bowling lawn was always the place that I dreamed of. It's a magical place, with its own copse, hidden from the world....I always dreamed of putting it there. But of course it was a bowling lawn. You've heard about my unfortunate illness...(that) combining with the fact that the bowling green is no longer needed was too big a coincidence to think about. I really think that Brighton deserves an open-air theatre...that one of the most artistic towns in England can have a theatre that it can be proud of, alongside all the big beautiful theatres inside....And this is a chance for us to make one, and look after it, and enjoy it for the whole of the summer. This is when the tourists come, this is when people want to go outside, in June, July and August and watch great theatre.' 
  In his last weeks, Bunting initiated the theatre designs and arranged for his life’s savings (£18,000) to be left to the project. He then brought together a team of five friends to help create it after his death. The BOAT team was made up of Steve Turner, construction manager, James Payne, television writer, Ross-Gurney-Randall, actor and playwright, Donna Close, Arts Manager and Producer, and Claire Raftery, theatre director. James Payne told etc magazine, 'If anyone else had asked, you would have said 'we will do our best' but couldn’t make any promises, but Adrian was one of those people, if he asked you would move heaven and earth for.'
  In March 2015, Bunting was one of 24 celebrated Brightonians honoured by having their names on the front of the new bus fleet. His friend, Dan Wilson said, 'There are few greater Brightonian accolades than having your name on a bus and Adrian would have been delighted.'
caption: The old bowling green in November 2013
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