It will take six people to fill the shoes of theatre boss David Bushby, discovers CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

TODAY David Bushby leaves his post as manager of the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in York after 30 years. He will not be replaced. Instead his duties - managing, supervising, making arrangements with the city's amateur theatre societies, programming, front-of-house management and lighting, among them - will be divided up. There is a new committee in place, and to the committee falls the task of stepping into the breach.

Born in Acomb, now living in Holgate and always a man of York, David Bushby is not one to blow his own trumpet in his home city, but if anyone has played a greater role in York's amateur theatrical life over the past four decades, please step forward to lay your claim now.

David is held in such high regard that there will be not one but two parties in his honour today. At lunchtime, it was the "work family" from Nestl, his employer, and this evening, in the lecture hall, it will be the "theatre family", the stewards, the societies and music groups.

"It's being provided by Nestl, which is their way of saying thanks," says David, visibly touched by the gesture.

"I'm not sure how I'll feel on the night...but I know I shall miss the job. I shall miss it tremendously - and it's finished possibly about two years earlier than I thought it might have been."

That last comment was said without bitterness. He is 58, and while he would have preferred to stay on until he turned 60, he believes Nestl was right to re-structure the running of the theatre, with a new management committee being established.

"I'm very, very confident in my own mind in what's been done: a lot of my thoughts in the early years about how the theatre should be run have now come to fruition and, from what I've seen over the past four or five months, I'm convinced that this theatre will go on and will go from strength to strength because it now has its own autonomy, with the blessing of Nestl."

There had been fears, rumours certainly, that Nestl wanted to close a theatre that had been built by Seebohm Rowntree - the then chairman of the confectionery firm of Rowntree - almost 70 years ago in a desire to provide outside activities for his employees. Those fears have been allayed.

"Yes, there has been a nervous feeling but simply because the wrong information got out. As far as I'm concerned there's always been a future for this theatre and Nestl has given assurances that it will continue as a theatre."

As for David, it is no secret that he has been suffering health problems for the past two years, leading to him cutting back on his duties, but he will still be contributing to the Rowntree Theatre. "I've told the committee that I'm willing to continue as a voluntary consultant - and I stress the word voluntary - if and when they want me. I must let them have their head but, at the same time, if they want to call upon me all they have to do is ask."

Once struck by the theatre bug, it never leaves, as David Bushby can testify. "The story I always tell, and it's quite true, is that I was standing outside a rehearsal for the York Youth Operatic and Choral Society at the old Priory Youth Club, waiting for my girlfriend to come out. I was called in, and eventually they persuaded me to join the society."

Did he have to sing that night, those 37 or 38 years ago? "Like all youth societies at that time, there were no auditions at all.

"Anyway, my first show was Yeoman Of The Guard, and in that show the yeomen come out in two lines; the first yeomen sings, then the second; I was the third in line, and there was all my family putting their fingers in their ears," David recalls.

The family was right. "In the four productions I did with York Youth I went from first tenor to second bass, to first bass to second tenor. They didn't know what to do with me!" he says.

By this time, he had married, and among the presents was a tool kit. "Some of us were getting too old to perform for York Youth and we were asked if we'd like to run it. I said 'Right, I've got this new tool kit, I can't sing, why don't I do the stage management?'...and I've never looked back."

David had served his apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker at Cooks, Troughton and Simms and at 21 he joined Rowntrees in that capacity, constructing air conditioning, repairing metal palettes and such like. At the same time he was in demand as stage manager and props master for nearly every society performing at the Rowntree Theatre, through his involvement with the new City Opera Group. He became a voluntary helper at the theatre too, and when theatre consultant George Watson had to suggest a successor for his full-time post, he put forward David.

So began David Bushby's 30-year role, one that expanded from the technical requirements, the lighting and staging, to his wide brief. He remembers with particular affection one of his duties at the theatre: factory film projectionist. He would show movies from 12.30pm to 12.50pm, and 1pm to 1.20pm to fit in with shift patterns and for retired Rowntree workers on Thursday afternoons.

"For the shift workers I'd show full-length films in five episodes and it was a fantastic time in my theatre career. I really enjoyed it...John Wayne, Rock Hudson movies, but the firm stopped doing it in 1986 when the shift patterns changed. Top Gun was the last one, I seem to recall," he says.

David Bushby has not trodden the boards since those York Youth days but he has never felt jealous of gifted performers on that Rowntree stage, be it Harry Worth, Roy Castle, or a young Janet McTeer. "She was playing the principal in Babes In The Wood for the Rowntree Players and she was terrified, the poor lass. We had to push her on stage! But the next year she won an award as the best drama school candidate," he says.

You can sense his pleasure in seeing others - performers, technical staff and audiences alike - enjoying theatre and his pride in the part the Joseph Rowntree Theatre has played. "Why do I love theatre? Theatre is magic," he says.

From a part-time hobby grew a full-time job. "I don't regret a moment of it," he says. "It's re-assuring that it'll take six people to do my job now! It was just technical at the start, now there's the admin, the politics, and perhaps I wouldn't have taken it on if I'd known that back then, but then again my love is still the theatre, when I'm at the side of the stage..."

...Magic, David, magic.

Updated: 12:59 Friday, July 27, 2001