Walking into Heerlen from the railway station, it is hard to miss the Royal Theater. The rounded building makes its presence felt without needing the height of its neighbours. Frits Peutz’s design belongs to a time when a trip to the cinema was a proper occasion.
Its doors opened in January 1938. Heerlen was then a growing mining town, and Royal gave it a cinema to match those ambitions. During the occupation, the theatre remained a place where people watched films. Around the liberation, it welcomed a very different visitor: Marlene Dietrich performed there on 17 September 1944.
An auditorium without a show
Royal remained in use for decades after the war. The arrival of large multiplexes changed the position of older cinemas. When I was allowed to photograph it, the cinema was not in use. Naturally, I did not let that opportunity pass.
A cinema auditorium is designed to draw your attention in one direction. When no film is showing, you start noticing the space around it. The shape of the room, rows of seats, passages and lighting take on a much larger role. What fades into the background during a screening becomes the subject of a photograph.
These pictures belong to that period of disuse. They do not mean that Royal remained closed for good afterwards. Filmhuis De Spiegel has used the building for films again and is working on the location’s further development. For the programme and current situation, check with the filmhouse; this report preserves Royal as I found it then.
That is one of the pleasures of photographing buildings like these. You record an in-between period that people walking past every day may hardly notice. Until refurbishment comes along and those ordinary details have disappeared.
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