Theatre Royal Stratford East
Joan Littlewood’s old workshop theatre, rebuilt under successive artistic directors as one of the most consequential venues in Britain for Black theatre, music and musical theatre. The Theatre Royal at Gerry Raffles Square, opened in 1884, became the home of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in 1953 — and from the late 1980s under Philip Hedley, and especially from 2004 to 2018 under Kerry Michael, the building established itself as a national centre for Black British theatre and Black-led musical theatre.
World premieres at Stratford East include Five Guys Named Moe (Clarke Peters, 1990), The Big Life (Paul Sirett and Paul Joseph’s Windrush musical, 2004), The Harder They Come (2006), and a long succession of new plays by Roy Williams, Bola Agbaje and others. The audience the building has built — heavily Black, working-class East-End — is itself part of its legacy.
People
Themes
Place
Sources
- Theatre Royal Stratford East — https://www.stratfordeast.com/
- Wikipedia — Theatre Royal Stratford East — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Royal_Stratford_East