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As Half Moon Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary, Communications Manager Stephen reflects on some of the highs and lows of its history in our new community view column in local newspaper the Docklands and East London Advertiser.
Read the Docklands and East London Advertiser e-editionCelebrating 50 years of the Half Moon Theatre
If you’re reading this article on publication day, Thursday 27 January 2022, you are part of a special day in the life of Half Moon – our 50th birthday as a local, East London theatre company. Feel free to break into song or have a celebratory piece of cake – it’s an important milestone!
From its inception in 1972, Half Moon has played a key role in the development of the theatre sector, as well as in the involvement in the arts of the broader East End community. It still thrives today as the UK’s leading professional small-scale young people’s venue and touring company.
Our current home is actually our third residence. We began life in a disused synagogue in Alie Street, Aldgate, and took our name from Half Moon Passage, an alleyway nearby. The opening production was Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of the Cities, which featured Will Knightley (father of Keira) in the cast.
In 1979 we moved into the former Welsh Methodist Chapel on the Mile End Road (now the Half Moon pub) and began its transformation into a new theatre and community centre. The first show, staged in the scaffolding of the un-renovated building, had Frances de la Tour as a female Hamlet.
As the company celebrated its 10th birthday, work started on an ambitious £1.2m scheme to use the Welsh Chapel as a community venue and to build a separate auditorium, as well as an independent young people’s theatre. A production of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist in 1983 gave Josie Lawrence her first professional job.
By the late 1980s the finances of the new buildings, in a climate of recession and funding cuts, became unviable and the theatre went into voluntary administration in 1990. Thankfully, the Young People’s Theatre became an independent organisation and moved into our current home, the former Limehouse Board of Works on White Horse Road, in 1994.
An award from the Heritage Lottery Fund Young Roots programme in 2015 allowed us to research the theatre’s history and we created Stages of Half Moon (www.stagesofhalfmoon.org.uk), an online archive celebrating its remarkable heritage. Here’s to another 50 years!
Stephen Beeny is the Communications Manager at Half Moon.
