A cost-cutting move by Waveney District Council is leading to a new era for the Marina Theatre in Lowestoft, where management, staff and volunteers from the Friends of the Marina Theatre have formed a charitable trust to take over the running of the organisation. Hazel Clover, former manager of the Regent Theatre in Ipswich and interim manager at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester, has been appointed as Chairman of the board, and the official handover of the Edwardian theatre is scheduled for later this year. A subsidy of £150,000-a-year for four years has been agreed, £70,000-a-year less than the Conservative-run council estimates it would otherwise have spent on the Marina. The Council will also continue to own, maintain and improve the historic theatre building. As well as programming touring musicals and drama, the venue will be continuing its long-running residency with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and making an ongoing commitment to a full-scale professional pantomime, which was reintroduced four years ago following a 50-year gap.