Arcola Theatre

Arcola Theatre is an Off West End theatre in the London Borough of Hackney. It presents plays, operas and musicals featuring established and emerging artists.

Arcola Theatre
LocationDalston
London, E8
United Kingdom
Coordinates51.551944°N 0.073889°W / 51.551944; -0.073889
Public transit Dalston Junction; Dalston Kingsland
OwnerArcola Theatre Production Company
TypeOff West End
Capacity200 (main house)
100 (studio)
ProductionRepertory productions
Construction
Opened2000 (2000)
Rebuilt2010-11
Website
arcolatheatre.com

The theatre building, in the former Colourworks paint factory on Ashwin Street, Dalston, houses two studio theatre spaces, two rehearsal studios and a café-bar. In 2020 the theatre announced plans to open Arcola Outside, also on Ashwin Street.[1]

The theatre runs one of East London's most extensive arts engagement programmes, creating over 11,000 opportunities for the local community every year.

Since 2007 the Green Arcola project has aimed to make Arcola the world's first carbon-neutral theatre.

History

Arcola Theatre was founded by artistic director Mehmet Ergen, in September 2000.

Its original location was a former textile factory on Arcola Street in Dalston. The theatre celebrated this with its fifth anniversary production, The Factory Girls by Frank McGuinness. In January 2011 the Arcola moved to a former paint-manufacturing workshop on Ashwin Street in Dalston, after its previous landlord earmarked the Arcola Street site for redevelopment as apartments.[2] It marked the move by premiering The Painter, a play about J. M. W. Turner by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.[3]

Since its inception the theatre has twice won the Peter Brook Empty Space Award and was awarded Time Out Live Awards in 2003 and 2006.

In 2007, an Arcola co-production of Mojo Mickey by Owen McCafferty became its first West End transfer to the Trafalgar Studios.[4] 2007 also marked the first season of the Arcola's Grimeborn, an opera and musical theatre festival that runs for two weeks in August.

The theatre is committed to achieving carbon neutral status and a research project, Arcola Energy, "bringing together the creative mindset and the engineering methodology", is established on the building's top floor to develop and market hydrogen fuel cells, with the profits subsidising the theatre's community arts projects.[5]

References
  1. "Arcola Outside".
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2010-12-09. Retrieved 2012-10-05.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. Lee, Veronica (10 April 2012). "Moving stories for London's fringe theatres". London Evening Standard.
  4. British Theatre Guide, 30 May 2007 accessed 18 Sep 2007
  5. "Case study: Arcola Theatre". 10:10 Climate Action. Retrieved 21 June 2019.


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