There's a fabulous opportunity to meet the staff of the Grand Theatre Academy and sample some of its work with an exciting Open Day on Saturday 24th March in the Lawrence House Studio from 12 to 4pm. And you'll have fun!

At the Blackpool Tourism Business Excellence Awards, the Grand Theatre picked up the award for Welcome All Award 2006, sponsored by Blackpool Exhibition and Conference Hotels. The theatre was also Highly Commended in the Cultural Experience of the Year category.

Ken Dodd OBE is leaving the Diddy Men in the Jam Butty Mines of Knotty Ash to bring his famous Happiness Show back to Blackpool's Grand Theatre this March. And how tickled we are!

Laugh, cry and dance in the aisles with TV soapstars Shobna Gulati and Shana Swash in an all-singing and dancing musical comedy from Monday 12 to Saturday 17 March 2007. From the wickedly witty pen of Louise Roche, writer of TV's Where the Heart Is, this touching and brilliantly funny musical follows five friends as they relive their past on an hilarious karaoke night out "¦ and you'll recognise every character!

Willy Russell's heartbreaking play is brought to life in the Lawrence House Studio on March 3 and 4. The Grand Theatre Youth Academy presents the captivating play of twin boys, separated at birth, only to be re-united by a twist of fate and a mother's haunting secret.

The Big Ballet was founded in 1994 and hails from the Urals. Each of the sixteen dancers in the corps de ballet weighs 220 pounds or more and has only one goal: not to lose a single pound!!! The Big Ballet deliberately and confidently challenge accepted social standards in a world where the pursuit of slenderness and beauty has taken on an almost maniacal devotion.

Billy Fisher, a working class nineteen year old, lives a dreary, ordinary life, but escapes from it by living in a dream world. His lack of attention causes inaccuracies in his work (the funeral directors of Shadrack and Duxbury), leading him to lie. As his errors and lies start to pile up he feels he has to get away...Billy has a difficult decision to make.

Over 200 people have taken a guided tour through Blackpool's glorious Grand in the dead of night, learning of the ghostly goings on in the town's 113 year old Victorian theatre, visiting areas that few have the opportunity to see during daylight hours, never mind the wee small hours around the witching hour.

Set in England in the 1920s, an impoverished British woman, who has given up her fancy and powerful lifestyle for her journalist boyfriend, befriends a terminally ill American heiress hoping she and her boyfriend will then come into wealth and power again. Kate Croy and Merton Denver are engaged in a passionate clandestine love affair.

Join gregarious guest speaker Gavin Henderson CBE as he takes you through a fascinating historical journey of Britain's best-loved seaside architecture on Thursday 8 February at 2.30pm. 'To walk on the sea without the disadvantage of being sick'. So said John Betjemen of piers.

Danny lives in a caravan with his Dad, the most marvellous and exciting Dad any boy ever had. But his father has a secret! When night comes, he poaches pheasants from Hazell's Wood. Mr Hazell, the biggest landowner in the district, wants to evict them both and the battle is quickly on to save their home. But how can one little boy defeat a rich and powerful landowner? Danny has a plan - and soon he and his Dad are caught up in a thrilling and remarkable adventure!

A Story for when we're Grandads is an award-winning darkly comic thriller which follows the lives of two unemployed young men who fake the symptoms of mental illness to claim benefits. Their drunken lifestyles lead Mike and Dave into ridiculously amusing situations, and eventually to a police cell and mental hospital. Then a mysterious stranger leaves them a briefcase of money and the police are knocking at their door, but there's just one thing they'd like to know"¦ does the off-licence deliver?