About Us > Company History

Half Moon Young People's Theatre was established by the Inner London Education Authority during the mid-1970s as the specialist youth and schools arm of the Half Moon Repertory Theatre, producing youth theatre productions, specialist training programmes and participatory theatre-in-education for schools.

The parent company itself was founded in 1972 when local active theatre artists took over a disused synagogue. The company moved again in 1979 to an old Methodist chapel based on the Mile End Road, Stepney London E1. This was fully refurbished in 1985 into a state of the art modern theatre. Sadly, in 1989, the Repertory company went into voluntary liquidation. The archive of the parent company is now held by Royal Holloway, University of London

Half Moon Young People's Theatre subsequently established itself as an independent Limited Company in 1990 and gained charitable status. In partnership with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the company identified a suitable building for a permanent base, which opened in June 1994 following the acquisition of £1.3m funding from London Docklands Development Corporation and European and Social Regeneration funds. With the appointment of the present Director Chris Elwell in 1997, the company underwent a radical re-focusing of it's operations which was followed by significant increases in its core funding from the Arts Council.

Opening as an operational public venue in 1998, Half Moon is now a fully accessible purpose-converted theatre building on three floors and has two studios with training, conference and workshop spaces offering a wide range of arts activites for the community to enjoy. It is located in E1 near the corner of White Horse Road and Commercial Road, just two minutes walk from Limehouse station - in the heart of Tower Hamlets' diverse and vibrant community.

From September 2007, Half Moon is pleased to be part of the East London Theatre Archive Digitisation Project being co-ordinated by the University of East London as a result of an extensive grant from the University Funding Council's Joint Information Systems Commitee. This aims to be a unique digital resource to record some 15,000 endangered artefacts and collections from a selection of theatres including Hackney Empire, Theatre Royal Stratford East and Wilton's Music Hall. In addition to documenting Half Moon's unarchived history since its parent company - Half Moon Reportory - went into liquidation in 1994, the aim will be to uncover the work of Half Moon TIE, when it was first established in the 1980s particularly looking at the multi/bi-lingual, then tri-lingual theatre (English/Bengali / Syhletti dialect/British Sign Language)  work, uniquely pioneered during that period. UEL Website.

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