n 1990, Julia Prior became a member of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Development Trust committee and they asked her to organise a fund-raising night at the theatre. She was taken aback to discover that they meant she should produce a whole show at the Grand, but she duly went to all three of the local amateur operatic societies to ask them to perform part of their show on one night and she also invited her daughter’s show band from Abraham Darby School. After Julia had been taken backstage by her god-father when she was a child and then been a theatre landlady and a keen theatre-goer, at last she was actually working at the theatre:
"Unfortunately it was only for one night, on a Sunday night, this was the sad thing – all the hard work that was put into this work and it was only for one performance. I had to open the box office up at home to start with and start selling tickets and then a couple of weeks before the production, the Grand Theatre box office took over…and I did this in 1990, I did it again in 1991 and 1992. We had the full backing of the lighting people and it was such a joy, because I was meeting a lot of people that I’d met previously and was actually working with them and it was the most happy time possible and very successful."