Halifax Civic Trust - Spring Lunch - with Barrie Rutter OBE

We invite you to join Halifax Civic Trust and celebrate our work during 2025 and our plans for the year ahead.

We are pleased to invite you to our Celebratory Lunch in True North Restaurant at Dean Clough, Halifax with the Mayor, Councillor Steven Leigh MBE and Mayoress Linda Leigh.

We are thriilled to welcome Barrie Rutter an English actor and the founder and former artistic director of the Northern Broadsides theatre company based in Dean Clough complex, Halifax as our guest speaker.

"Hull, Hell ’n Halifax"

Drawing on a distinguished career spanning international stages and Northern communities, Barrie Rutter OBE reflects on the importance of place, heritage and cultural identity — and on why Halifax, and Dean Clough in particular, continue to matter to him.

We will begin at 12.30 for a 1pm start on Saturday 7th March. The event will close at 4pm

There will be a raffle with funds raised going towards our future work.

It promises to be an interesting afternoon with good food and good company.

You will need to book the event via Eventbrite. The meal is a fixed price menu at 'True North' Restaurant. There are two courses for £35.00.

True North have put together a menu and water will be on the table. Drinks (wine etc.) will be available for additional purchase at the integral bar.. Tea and filter coffee will be avialable for purchase at the end of the meal.

Menu choices are to be made in advance from the fixed price menu with a variety of Vegetarian and Gluten Free options.

Booking Process:

Book a place here on Eventbrite with the number of tickets you require.

Click on the menu below - it opens in a seperate window - and choose your food selection.

You will need to chose food for each of your guests.

Halifax Civic Trust - Spring Lunch. 7th March 2026 - Advance Menu Selection – Fill out form

Next Steps:

You will receive tickets from Eventbrite by email for the number of places you have booked.

We will be notified of your booking. We will check if your menu choices have been made. If there is a problem we will contact you.

If you have any queries you can contact Judith on priestley45@btinternet.com or on 07747 771356

On the day:

If you could please arrive for 12.30 for 13.00.

The talk will start after lunch and we expect to close by 16.00 prompt.

Please bring a copy of your ticket on your phone or printed off to be checked.

Gratuities for staff at True North are at the discretion of attendees.

Closing date for bookings is 28th February 2026.

Barrie Rutter is the Founder and Artistic Director of Northern Broadsides. He was born in Hull and since leaving school in 1964 his acting career has stretched from Hamburg to Helsinki, Bradford to Beijing and includes film, television and radio. But he is best described as a ‘theatre animal’, and has had his happiest moments on the stage, whether in Shakespeare’s Globe, London, the ancient amphitheatre of Epidaurus in Greece or the stone cellar that is the Viaduct at Dean Clough in Halifax.

His theatre work includes: Henry IV, Henry V, Coriolanus and The Taming of the Shrew for the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Mysteries, The Crucible, Guys and Dolls, The Oresteia, The Rivals, Animal Farm, Martin and The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus for the Royal National Theatre, the title role in Hobson’s Choice at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre and most recently, Jarvis Huntley-Pike in A Chorus of Disapproval at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

In 2008 Rutter directed and played the title role in the premiere of Jack Lear by Ben Benison at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and directed The Tempest for THOC Cyprus Theatre Organisation. In 2009 he directed Richard IIIin Estonia for Theatre Vanemuine, Tartu, Estonia.

Work for Northern Broadsides as director and actor includes: Richard III, The Merry Wives, Poetry or Bust, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Cracked Pot, The Blood of Dracula, The Passion, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Samson Agonistes, The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, Twelfth Night, King Lear, The Mysteries 2000, Much Ado About Nothing, Alcestis, King John, Oedipus, Macbeth, Henry V, Antigone, The Merchant of Venice, Comedy of Errors, Sweet William, School for Scandal, The Wars of the Roses, The Man With Two Gaffers, The Tempest, Lisa’s Sex Strike, Othello, Medea, The Game, We are Three Sisters, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Rutherford & Son and An August Bank Holiday Lark.

Barrie Rutter was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours 2015.