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Description
A 36 to 50 seat theatre in the heart of New Cross, in a dedicated fringe theatre venue with a flexible stage space. The artistic policy is to bring well known but often hardly ever performed plays to the London audience and also allowing actors to undertake public performances of such work. The venue is also home to 'Shakespeare in the Park' a large scale outdoor touring theatre company who will often have test performances prior to their tours performed at this venue.
The theatre is 100 yards from New Cross BR (zone 2 and 1 stop from London Bridge) and free parking from 7pm outside the venue. They are situated on the main A2 truck road and major bus routes. Deptford Bridge DLR is 500 yards away.
The theatre has full LED lighting, a projector and screen and a well stocked bar area for sole use of the theatre users.
It is also used by 'The London Comedy Course' as their training base who teach stand up comedy skills in association with 'Up The Creek' comedy club in Greenwich.
History
The artistic director, Harry Denford took over the running of the venue in March 2011 to transform it into a fully operational fringe theatre and covert it from its previous usage as a sound and rehearsal space. Harry had previously directed professional plays at over 70 UK theatres in the past 7 years including three plays at London’s Rose Theatre and is also a headline stand up comedian playing venues such as 'Jongleurs'.
It is also the rehearsal and casting venue for 'Shakespeare in the park' who undertake large scale outdoor Shakespeare shows and the home of 'The London Comedy Course' which teaches stand up comedy.
The venue before that was a nightclub which had a dubious reputation and was closed down soon after the well documented New Cross fire in the 1980’s which happened in the neighbouring building.
All the costs of the conversion work came from royalties from the hit aviation comedy 'Club Class' which in the past 7 years has played at over 180 UK and international theatres including 'The Lowry' 'Derby Playhouse' and every year for the past seven years at 'The Hawth' in Crawley and was written by Harry. The touring cast also perform the play at this venue when a new cast is put together each time.
In Sept 2011, This venue was selected as one of the Eco venues for ‘The Theatre Trust’ and was built with energy saving in mind including a full LED light rig and all building work from reclaimed materials and even the beer in the bar is bought from local brewers.
Harry wanted to create a London fringe venue which was affordable to theatre production companies to stage professional theatre and also the venue undertakes a number of its own productions which they often transfer to the regionals.
Transfers in 2011 include to major theatres such as Malvern Theatre, Wycombe Swan, Galbenkian, Bournemouth Pavilion and the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford.
Harry also undertook the bold step of staging performances of Russian plays performed also in Russian, which saw ‘The Bear’, ‘The Proposal’ and an extended run of ‘The Wood Demon’ sell out.
The question often asks is the name 'The London Theatre' and how come it is called that as it is one of London’s most intimate theatres. On choosing a name, they thought of the most obvious, and then thought, no way - there must be a theatre called that already in London, there isn’t and as the theatre is in London, they became the London Theatre and registered the name.
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