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Why Should I Choose A Community Theatre Space?

Writer's picture: Cassie OsbourneCassie Osbourne

Updated: Jun 11, 2023


Cassie is in Amsterdam this week spending a little time with Kyle before throwing herself into the casting of “Blackbird” and I thought I would step in and spend a little time talking about the South London Theatre in West Norwood that will be the venue the show. It is a return visit as Everything’s Rosie performed “Kindertransport” there last year. In the theatre we are used to talking about spaces. “It is a great space to perform”, “It is an intimate space” and so on – but a lot of theatres have interesting histories.



I suggested that South London Theatre might be a good venue for the company last year. I had acted there some forty years ago in a range of shows from Shakespeare to Sondheim. I was surprised when Cassie and I visited because the internal layout had changed a lot and only the bar seemed to be in the same place. There are a set of large doors, which had once been behind the main stage but now form the entrance to the theatre. Why are the doors significant? Because they used to be the doors that West Norwood’s fire fighters would leave form to fight any fire spotted by the watchman at the top of the fire station tower.



The theatre started life as a fire station in 1881 and is the only remaining Victorian fire station built for horse drawn tenders in England. With its original red doors and octagonal watch tower it is a Grade II listed building. A fire engine bell, presented by the London Fire Brigade when the theatre held a fund raising 48 hour Shakespeare reading in 1981, is behind the bar.



It remained a fire station until 1917 when the building became the parish hall for neighbouring St Luke’s Church. In 1928 the Norwood Players used the hall for a performance of JM Barrie’s “Dear Brutus” so I suppose you could say that the building’s theatrical history goes back to then. By the 1960s the church no longer needed it and it was in a rundown state. Lambeth Council bought it in 1967 and soon afterwards work started on converting the building to the South London Theatre Project. The bar was the first part of the theatre to be completed. Of course!



And a theatre it remains. It originally had a main proscenium stage which fronted a theatre seating about 300, from memory, and a studio, Prompt Corner seating about fifty, was added in 1975. Over the years the theatre has had a staggering repertoire from Shakespeare and other classics to new shows, musicals, pantomimes and everything else in the canon of theatre you can think of.



However, things do change – and the building is old and by this century was in need of a lot of work to keep it standing. From 2015-2017 the fire station was internally rebuilt, and the internal space now houses more than just the theatre which now comprises an excellent studio space which you will see when you come to see “Blackbird”. It is truly wonderful to be part of an historic space.



Although Everything’s Rosie is a professional company and “Blackbird” is a professional production, South London Theatre is a well-established community theatre. Let us hear none of the looking down on “amateurs” nonsense. South London Theatre has a deserved reputation for excellence. Some of those young “amateurs” are the great professional names of tomorrow, whilst others could have found fame in lights but had different callings of work or family, and others are actors who left the business or were “resting”. I had a great time at the 48-hour Shakespeare fund-raiser causing mayhem at 3am on the Sunday morning by adding the sound of “alarums off” and any trumpet call which occurred during “Richard III”. My partner in the mayhem had been one of the priests from the original West End production of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and had got permission from Equity to get involved in a Community Theatre whilst he was between shows. Likewise, when I acted in Hall Green Little Theatre in Birmingham I had the great pleasure in locking horns with a formidable former actor in the court martial scenes of “Conduct Unbecoming”.



I am pleased that Everything’s Rosie never looks down on “amateur” players. They are all our real colleagues, who are friends and equals in creating the best of challenging and joyous entertainment and keeping theatre alive despite the many funding challenges and threats from government, national and local. Without community theatre many of the the seed beds of “professional” theatre would not exist. We should all be proud that South London Theatre fulfils such an important role.


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