London's Newest Theatre Ready For Business.

[MamasDoin'Fine]

Posted: 3/6/12 at 4:45am

London is about to get a brand new theatre, with a little help from Sir Ian McKellen

If these are gloomy times for arts funding, nobody told Jez Bond.
Two years ago, Bond took possession of a nondescript office block in Finsbury Park, north London. His plan was almost ludicrously ambitious: to drum up £2.2m in the middle of an economic downturn and build a theatre from scratch.
By the end of this year, the shiny new Park Theatre will open its doors.

Not only has Bond secured almost all of the funds - although there is a crucial £400,000 left to raise - but he has received the high-profile backing of Sir Ian McKellen and other theatre luminaries.

The Park Theatre will cater to the local community and promises to transform an area that has long lived in the shadow of its chi-chi neighbour, Islington, home to the Almeida.
But Bond also intends to bring in audiences from far and wide, and for this the location is his trump card. The venue is directly outside the Tube station and the journey from Oxford Circus takes just 15 minutes.
It took six years to find the perfect venue and Bond believes this rapidly gentrifying area provides exactly the right mix for his venture. Finsbury Park has been without a theatre for nearly half a century - few residents remember the Empire, which was bulldozed in 1965.
“I worked in Finsbury Park years ago and you now see what you didn’t see then - young, professional couples pouring out of the Tube at rush hour,” says Bond, previously a freelance director in regional and touring productions.
“We want people to come to the theatre for the first time and we want to be at the heart of the community. But without a core audience of already theatre-savvy people it would be impossible because that takes years to build.”

The Park Theatre will have two spaces, one seating 200 people and a smaller studio seating 90.
Both will be “intimate and Donmar-esque” - as Bond explains it, they will be “wonderfully close venues where you feel as if you can almost reach out and touch the actors”.

Park 200 will feature plays produced mostly in-house, while Park 90 will be a fringe venue for hire “but very much a curated space”. Bond and his team spend most nights scouting new productions across the country.
He says: “Our artistic policy will be broad. We’re looking for strong narrative drive. We want theatre that makes you laugh, cry, think, leave a little bit different from when you came in.” The model is the Tricycle in Kilburn, a local venue with a national reputation.

Engaging new, young audiences is a priority and Bond is looking at ways of using social media “to continue the conversation after you’ve seen the show”. His dream is “to build a loyal audience and see the same faces come back time and time again”.
The plot is still a building site - the old office block, headquarters of the charity Sense, has been knocked down - but the plans by David Hughes Architects feature an impressive glass-roofed atrium. There will be an all-day cafe and late night bar with a large window projecting over the pavement - this is what Bond refers to as his “shopfront”, and he hopes that commuters spilling out of the station will be irresistibly drawn to the place.

The development is costing £2.2m in total - comprised of £1.1m from private donors and another £1.1m from the sale of five flats earmarked for the upper floors.
But this is where the final £400,000 really matters. If Bond can raise the money, only three of the flats will need to be sold and the space allocated for the other two will be used instead for an education floor.
“It will be a wonderful multi-use space: we can run our own programmes, people can hire it, we can offer it to local charities and organisations,” he explains. “We will work with schools but also with older members of the community because they are often left out, isolated and looking for something to do. We’d love to have an over-60s play reading, for example.”

Bond should have no shortage of takers for these community projects - when a notice was put up advertising for local volunteer ushers, it prompted 88 replies including many from retirees eager for the chance to get involved.
The deadline for money to be pledged is April and those canvassing for public donations include Sir Ian McKellen, Tamzin Outhwaite and Celia Imrie, all enthusiastic Park Theatre supporters.

Sir Ian has contributed to a video appeal, in which he says the theatre will be “wonderful for all sorts of plays, ancient and modern”. He is also a fan of the location: “The closer you are to a Tube, the happier you are, and you couldn’t get much closer to Finsbury Park.”

Now Bond is on the home straight and is remarkably unruffled for a man who has spent the past two years managing a major construction project, masterminding a fundraising campaign and defining the artistic vision of a new theatre. He has become an expert in building regulations and council bureaucracy, overseeing every detail from the door handles to the ratio of female-to-male toilet facilities (far more for the ladies, you'll be pleased to hear).
How has he managed to pull all this off? “For me it’s the same skill-set as managing a show - except this is the biggest show of my life,” he says.
“I’ve worked 16 hours a day on this for nearly two years. The hardest bit is now, because we have the pressure of time. But I absolutely love it. This is my dream and my passion.”

http://parktheatre.co.uk/

Updated On: 3/6/12 at 04:45 AM

[Sean2]

Posted: 3/7/12 at 10:19pm

Thanks for posting about this, Mama! I live about a 5 minute walk from there and it's the first I've heard about it! Shame on me.

Where did you read this article, by the way?