Origin stories: they’re all the rage, and here comes the Hull Truck theatre company’s genesis tale. Writer Richard Bean takes us back to 71 Coltman Street in December 1971, where in the beginning of Hull Truck was Mike Bradwell, and Mike Bradwell’s word was God.
He and a cohort of actors stationed themselves in Hull to fight a battle against a Yorkshire winter and the prospect of employment. Bradwell jokes that it’s better than Stratford, because if you sign on there, “there’s a chance they will find you a job”. No such concerns in Hull 1971. He underlines the joke by explaining that the two funding streams of culture in Britain at the time were the Arts Council and the dole.
