Tricycle Theatre

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Tricycle Theatre
Tricycle Theatre Kilburn.jpg
The Tricycle Theatre
Address 269 Kilburn High Road
London NW6 7JR
United Kingdom
Owner Tricycle Theatre Company Limited
Capacity 235[1]
Construction
Opened 1980
Rebuilt 1998
Years active 1980 – present
Architect Tim Foster Architects[2]
Website
www.tricycle.co.uk

The Tricycle Theatre is located on Kilburn High Road in Kilburn in the London Borough of Brent, England. Since 1980, the Tricycle has been presenting a wide range of plays reflecting the cultural diversity of the area, as well as political works and verbatim reconstructions of public inquiries.

History

Wakefield Tricycle Company

The Tricycle Theatre opened on the Kilburn High Road, London, in 1980 as the permanent home of the Wakefield Tricycle Company, a touring theatre company that was known for producing British premieres, new writing, children's shows and theatre for the community in London and the South East. The Wakefield Tricycle Company had been started in 1972 by Ken Chubb and Shirley Barrie, performing initially in a room behind the Pindar of Wakefield pub in King's Cross. The name 'Wakefield Tricycle Company' was adopted as a pun on the Wakefield Cycle of mystery plays, the pub's name and the fact that the initial company had three members.

The company commissioned new plays which it presented at arts centres around the country and then brought into small London theatres, such as The Bush and The King's Head. The Wakefield Tricycle produced over 60 plays including works by Sam Shepard, John Antrobus, and Olwen Wymark as well as co-founder Shirley Barrie.[3][4][5]

The building

After securing the support of the London Borough of Brent, the Greater London Council and Arts Council England, the company was given a lease and began converting the Forester's Hall on the Kilburn High Road into what is now known as the Tricycle Theatre ('Wakefield' being dropped from the company's name at this point), opting for this space due to the lack of local entertainment facilities for the residents of Kilburn at the time. The Foresters Hall, which was built for the Ancient Order of Foresters had previously been used for various purposes, including as a cinema and as a music and dance hall and as temporary offices for Brent Housing Department and Rent Tribunal.[3][4][5]

The 235-seat[1] auditorium, designed by architect Tim Foster and theatre consultant Iain Mackintosh, was modelled on the Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, Yorkshire. It was built using free-standing system-scaffolding that supported padded benches rather than individual seats. The pre-existing proscenium arch was in front of a stage so shallow as to be almost useless, so a large apron was built to take the acting area out into 'the courtyard', leaving the old stage as almost a backstage area, frequently unused in Tricycle productions, but leaving the theatre with the oddity of a proscenium arch framing a small rear, inner acting area.

In 1987 the theatre suffered a devastating fire that spread from a neighbouring timber yard and which seriously damaged the building. However, after extensive fundraising, the theatre was rebuilt and reopened in 1989, with only minor alterations.

In 1998, a 300-seat[1] cinema was added to the complex, and in 2001 the Creative Space was built for the theatre's extensive education and community work. All stages of the development were designed by Tim Foster Architects (now Foster Wilson Architects).[6][2]

Artistic directors

In 1984 Ken Chubb turned the Tricycle over to artistic director Nicolas Kent, who had previously brought a successful production of Playboy of the West Indies, by Mustapha Matura, to the Tricycle with the Oxford Playhouse Company. Ken Chubb and Shirley Barrie returned shortly thereafter to their native Canada where they have continued working in theatre and education.[3][4][5]

In 2012 the role of artistic director was taken over by Indhu Rubasingham.[7]

Productions

Among the highpoints of the first 10 years were productions of Return to the Forbidden Planet, Just So (a musical based on the Rudyard Kipling children's stories) and productions by The Black Theatre Co-operative, Carib Theatre, Druid, Field Day, Foco Novo, Market Theatre of Johannesburg, National Theatre of Brent, Paines Plough, Shared Experience, Talawa Theatre Company and others.[3][4][5]

Tricycle productions 2006 – 2014

  • The House That Will Not Stand by Marcus Gardley (9 October – 29 November 2014)
  • The Kilburn Passion by Suhayla El-Bushra, presented by Tricycle Young Company 19-25 Ensemble (5 – 9 August 2014)
  • The Colby Sisters of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by Adam Bock (19 June − 26 July 2014)
  • Bracken Moor by Alexi Kaye Campbell, presented by Shared Experience and the Tricycle Theatre (6 June – 20 July 2013)
  • Paper Dolls by Philip Himberg, a play about a Filipino drag act in Tel Aviv (28 February – 28 April 2013)
  • The Arabian Nights by Mary Zimmerman, adapted from The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (30 November 2012 – 12 January 2013)
  • Red Velvet, a world premiere of a play by Lolita Chakrabarti based on the true story of Ira Aldridge (11 October – 24 November 2012; revived 23 January 2014 – 15 March 2014)
  • Jazz at Cafe Society, a show about the legendary 1940s New York Cafe Society nightclub, written and produced by Alex Webb, narrated by DJ and BBC Radio presenter Max Reinhardt and featuring Gwyneth Herbert, Alexander Stewart and China Moses (16–21 July 2012)
  • Lover's Rock Monologues, the story of how a subgenre of reggae born in the UK defined a generation in the late 1970s and 1980s and had huge impact on British pop culture (9–14 July 2012)
  • The Bomb – a partial history with plays by Lee Blessing, John Donnelly, Elena Gremina, Amit Gupta, Zinnie Harris, Ron Hutchinson (9 February – 1 April 2012)
  • The Riots, written by Gillian Slovo from spoken evidence (17 November − 10 December 2011; transferred to the Bernie Grant Arts Centre 4 − 14 January 2012)
  • Broken Glass by Arthur Miller (10 August − 10 September 2010)
  • Women, Power and Politics (4 June − 17 July 2010). Following the 2010 General Election, the Tricycle presented a season of twelve new plays that examined both the history of women's role in politics, and the complex issues surrounding women's participation and role in contemporary governments
  • Greta Garbo Came to Donegal (7 January – 20 February 2010) by Frank McGuinness
  • Not Black and White by Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Bola Agbaje (8 October − 19 December 2009), a season of full-length plays looking at 21st-century London from a black perspective
  • The Great Game: Afghanistan – A festival that included 12 newly commissioned short plays by Richard Bean, David Edgar, David Greig, Amit Gupta, Ron Hutchinson, Stephen Jeffreys, Abi Morgan, Ben Ockrent, J. T. Rogers, Simon Stephens, Colin Teevan and Joy Wilkinson (17 April − 14 June 2009). The production, which received an Olivier Award Nomination for Outstanding Achievement, returned to the Tricycle in the autumn of 2010, before embarking on a tour of the USA[8]
  • Loot by Joe Orton, starring Matt Di Angelo, David Haig and Doon Mackichan (11 December 2008 – 31 January 2009)
  • Radio Golf by August Wilson (2 October − 1 November 2008)
  • Let There Be Love by Kwame Kwei-Armah (17 January − 16 February 2008; revived 5 − 30 August 2008)
  • Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley (22 November 2007 − 12 January 2008)
  • Moonlight & Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson (September 2007 − 3 November 2007; revived 2 July − 2 August 2008)
  • Called to Account edited by Richard Norton-Taylor (19 April − 9 June 2007)
  • Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine by Lynn Nottage (14 September − 21 October 2006)
  • The 39 Steps adapted by Patrick Barlow (10 August − 9 September 2006)

"Tribunal plays"

From 1994, during the tenure of Nicolas Kent as Artistic Director, the Tricycle established a reputation for its distinctive "tribunal plays" based on verbatim reconstructions of public inquiries.

In 1994 the Tricycle produced Half the Picture by Richard Norton-Taylor and John McGrath (a dramatisation of the Scott Arms to Iraq Inquiry), which was the first play ever to be performed in the Houses of Parliament. This was the first of a series of plays that have subsequently become known as the Tricycle Tribunal Plays. The next, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1946 War Crimes Tribunal, was Nuremberg, which was followed by Srebrenica – the UN Rule 61 Hearings, which later transferred to the National Theatre and the Belfast Festival at Queen's.

In 1999, the Tricycle's reconstruction of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry – The Colour of Justice received tremendous critical and public acclaim, The Guardian calling it "the most vital piece of theatre on the London stage".[9] It went on to play for two weeks at Theatre Royal, Stratford East and transferred to the Victoria Palace in the West End. It completed a national tour in 1999 which included the Belfast Festival and the National Theatre.

In 2003 Justifying War – Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry opened at the Tricycle.[10]

In 2004 the Tricycle produced Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom written by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo from spoken evidence, which transferred to the New Ambassadors Theatre in the West End[11] and the Culture Project in New York (where Archbishop Desmond Tutu appeared in the production). In 2006 the Tricycle presented a performance of the play at the Houses of Parliament and also on Washington's Capitol Hill. It has since been performed around the world. Through the "Guantanamo Reading Project" there have been 25 community productions of readings of the play in the United States.

Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry opened in 2005 and later transferred to Belfast, Derry and to the Abbey Theatre for the Dublin Theatre Festival. In 2006 the theatre was awarded an Evening Standard Special Drama Award for "pioneering political work", and a Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement[12] for Bloody Sunday.

In 2007 Called to Account – the indictment of Tony Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – a hearing was staged at the Tricycle with evidence from American political lobbyist Richard Perle, the Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations Security Council in 2003, Juan Gabriel Valdes, and ex-Cabinet Minister Clare Short.[13]

Most of these plays have been broadcast by the BBC on radio or television,[14] and have together reached audiences of over 30 million people worldwide.

2014 Jewish Film Festival funding

In August 2014, the theatre informed the UK Jewish Film Festival (UKJFF) that it could not host the festival in 2014 (as it had done for the previous eight years) if the festival continued to pursue a £1400 grant it had sought from the Israeli Embassy in London.[15][16] The theatre offered to make up the loss itself but the festival's chief executive director Stephen Margolis dismissed this offer as a "publicity stunt", saying that the Tricycle's artistic director Indhu Rubasingham had also demanded to scrutinise the list of films to be shown.[17] The decision led to accusations of anti-semitism and The Jewish Chronicle described the decision as "open racism".[18] Rubasingham drew attention to her own and the Tricycle's record, adding, "I am not anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli".[19]

Nick Cohen, writing in The Spectator, accused the Tricycle of inconsistency, as other groups' or events' funding had not, he claimed, previously been examined in this way. Cohen also pointed out that the Tricycle itself accepted Arts Council funding during times that the UK was actively involved in military conflicts.[20] In an editorial, The Guardian said that the Tricycle had made "a bad error of judgment".[21] Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was reported as saying that the theatre had been "misguided" in demanding the festival drop its sponsorship by the Israeli Embassy.[22]

Theatre directors Nicholas Hytner and Richard Eyre both supported the Tricycle's position and deplored those who had misrepresented that position.[23] Hytner also said "Rubasingham and the Tricycle board could not have made clearer their commitment to Jewish culture … It is entirely understandable that they felt obliged to insist that no government agency should sponsor the festival. The Tricycle … has a clear responsibility to make no statement about the dispute that is behind the current conflict. It greatly saddens me that the UKJFF have unwisely politicised a celebration of Jewish culture".[15]

However, in a joint statement on 15 August, the UKJFF and Tricycle Theatre said: "Some weeks ago the UKJFF fell out, very publicly, with the Tricycle over a condition imposed by the Tricycle regarding funding. This provoked considerable public upset. Both organisations have come together to end that. Following lengthy discussions between the Tricycle and UKJFF, the Tricycle has now withdrawn its objection and invited back the UK Jewish Film Festival on the same terms as in previous years with no restrictions on funding from the Embassy of Israel in London." The 2014 festival did not take place at the theatre, but it was suggested that the Tricycle might hold some UKJFF-related events later in the year.[24][25][26][27]

In May 2015 the Tricycle Theatre's chair, Jonathan Levy, issued an apology in a piece published in The Jewish Chronicle, saying that the theatre had taken the wrong decision when it had asked UKJFF to return to the Israeli Embassy the £1400 funding it had received and that it was now seeking ways to rebuild mutual trust with the Jewish community.[28]

Facilities

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References

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External links

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