Your first time... How was it?

My early experiences of theatre were annual trips to the panto in brighton. My first proper theatre experience was an amateur production of West Side Story aged about 11 then starlight express at the apollo victoria

I don't remember my first time going to the theatre. I lived in the middle of nowhere where even the nearest cinema was in the town beyond the next town so there wasn't much opportunity to see anything, but I have vague memories of seeing something somewhere several years earlier than the events of the next paragraph.

The first time I remember going to the theatre was when my mother - once a stage actress - took me to London. We spent a couple of nights there and saw Noises Off at the Savoy and 42nd Street at Drury Lane. The latter captivated me, partly because of the divinely lovely Barbara King and partly because of the flying cloths and trucked sets smoothly moving in and out around the action. I've always had a curiosity about what goes on behind the scenes in anything and in this case the curiosity was literal, and that theatre trip gave me an interest in the technical side of theatre that has endured to this day. (I hate it when documentaries about shows go on and on and on about the performers. I don't care about the performers. Show me the back of the set.)

oh dear, you are all so young. My first professional/London theatre was Laurence Harvey and Elizabeth Larner in Camelot at Drury lane in the early 60's.....I can still see all that gold, and all the chorus apparently skating in a winter scene. A life changing moment for an 8 year old. My first Shakespeare was the wars of the Roses in 1964 at Stratford - when I was 9, and again a life changing moment. The first opera was La Boheme when I was 12, And the first straight play in London was Maggie Smith et al, in Private lives. What joy that was, and it felt such an event, not just another night.

The first thing I remember seeing was an am-dram production of Oliver, which I adored - I was particularly invested in that because my aunt was in the chorus, and my dad was the company pianist. I'd also been at a lot of rehearsals (in lieu of a babysitter) and had been adopted as the 'official rehearsal page-turner', since I was a little too young to have been eligible to audition for one of Fagin's gang.

The first professional production I saw was the Cats tour somewhere in the mid/late 80s.... even at the tender age of about 10 I despised it, and it's a wonder I gave theatre another chance....

The first amateur theatre I remember seeing was at primary school when I was about 5 and the top class did scenes from A Midsummer's Night's Dream. It was probably dire but from my youthful perspective the 11 year olds acting seemed so grown up!

The first West End show I saw was Return To The Forbidden Planet in the early 90s when I was about 7. I still love the show & wish it would get another professional production as the last one I saw was well over 10 years ago, though I did see a good amateur production a couple of years ago.

Also age 7 I saw my first opera, La Boheme. Unfortunately it put me off opera for nearly 10 years! Even now, after 12 years of regular operagoing, I am not that keen on Boheme. I grant there is some beautiful music but I find the characters jolly annoying.

It would have been the Wombles at Swindon's Wyvern Theatre sometime in the mid seventies. I remember being scared of the curtain because I thought it would make me jump when it opened! I think I got over that pretty quickly!

Obviously shows like Cats and Starlight Express, though often derided these days, were a great introduction to musical theatre for many. It was the same for me - the local theatre put on a christmas show every year (nothing like English pantos, sadly) and I vaguely remember seeing one or two of those.

My proper "first time" was Starlight Express in Bochum 1989. I had been bugging my parents to take me to Hamburg to see Cats and they were like "driving all that way for a musical? You have to be kidding!" and then "There's a coach trip to that new thing in Bochum, you can go and see that instead" and they put me on that coach alone. Yea, they didn't win any Parents of the Year awards back then, but these days my Mom is quite happy to tag along to shows all over Europe.

Ahhh, that first time...! Actually, I can't remember the very first time, but it would have been one of several trips to see a panto. On a bus, with a load of other young kids, complete strangers. We were packed off once a year, just after Christmas to somewhere which seemed vast. Oooh, the excitement of walking into the foyer! Big stairs, carpets, hot-dog stands (now was this actually a very big cinema I have asked myself?), and programmes being waved around. Then going in to take your seats, looking at the richness of the red velvet stage curtain. And then the lights dimmed, and I seem to remember we all screamed with delight as one scene ran into another with scenery that came from the ceiling, and some from the side, some was just a flat curtain which moved from behind sometimes, and some was a proper scene in somewhere like a cave. I loved the pretty dresses, and was strangely attracted to the male dancers who always wore tights, and before you knew it, it was over, and we were back on the bus. I never seemed to be able to capture the sheer joy of my visit when telling my parents about it, so it was something very special and private to me.
Then I acted in school plays, which I loved...
And then when I was fourteen, a teacher took us as a school group one Saturday night to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace Theatre, and my life was transformed. All those wonderful memories from my early childhood came flooding back. A tube train (no coach this time), neon lights advertising the name of the show (and what a theatre to see as your first West End theatre!), the climb up to the Upper Circle (tickets £1.15), the programmes (we'd have to wait until after the show for the hot-dogs which were always sold from stands just outside the Palace, along with Music For Pleasure recordings of the show by touts calling, "All the songs from the show!"), no stage curtain (now that was something!) and then the lights dimmed, and that guitar riff played as the strings vibrated as the Overture kicked in... And I was completely mesmerised.
And from that moment on, I knew where my life was going, and I still get that thrill of seeing a lighting rig, the height of the proscenium, the orchestra pit, and I love to walk to the front of the stalls and look back and up at the whole theatre, feeling the complete joy of being there!
(Ooh it's been good to recall all this, and read all the other stories. What a wonderful thread!)

Aspects of Love '91. Went with ma and step pa. they told me James Bond was going to be in it. I remember me ma was very pregnant so must have been the summer. I adored it from the very back of the Welsh stalls

My OTHER first time - I was 19, I was the 'girl', I fell asleep - says EVERYTHING

What happened to those hot dogs stands anyway? Now that you mention them, I remember their existance when I first started theatre-going in London in the early 90s, but they disappeared not long after.

As for my first time seeing a show in London: Boarding a coach at 10pm on Friday evening in the western corner of Germany (Aachen), driving through a night, a ferry crossing from Calais to Dover around 2-3am in the night, arriving in London at the crack of dawn on Saturday, wandering around in a daze for some hours, catching the 3pm matinee of Starlight Express (of course! Well, I did love the show back then), hurrying to Hyde Park where the coach was departing at 6 or 7pm, another drive + ferry ride through the night, arriving back home in Aachen around 4-5am in the morning, spending all Sunday in bed. Mature, lazy me marvels at young me's dedication back in those days.

Planned to do this again for Miss Saigon shortly after it opened in 1990, mis-booked for Friday evening instead. Father cussed and complained alot, packed the neighbour and me into a car and drove all the way to London for a weekend. Most memorably, just after leaving the ferry port in Dover, some blokes obviously got excited by our German car plates and mooned us through the rear window of their car. Classy welcome to Britain

I wasn't really taken to the theatre as a child *small violin* but living in London and Entry Pass really opened it up to me. My first play was A Woman Killed with Kindness, which was dull but I like the spectacle of theatre, even if the play isn't very good.

I go and see about 40-45 shows a year now (as cheap as possible).