almeida-theatre

The Almeida Theatre is a 325-seat producing house located on Almeida Street off Upper Street in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre opened in 1980, and produces a diverse range of drama.

The building that now houses the theatre was originally constructed in 1837 for the newly formed Islington Literary and Scientific Society. It included a library, reading room, museum, laboratory, and a lecture theatre seating 500. The architects were the fashionable partnership of Robert Lewis Roumieu and Alexander Dick Gough. The library was sold off in 1872 and the building was disposed of in 1874 to the Wellington Club (Almeida Street then being called Wellington Street) which occupied it until 1886. In 1885 the hall was used for concerts, balls, and public meetings. The Salvation Army bought the building in 1890, renaming it the Wellington Castle Barracks (Wellington Castle Citadel from 1902). To suit the building's new purpose, the front-facing lecture hall's tiered benches were replaced so that the congregation was seated in the conventional position, facing away from the front, and a balcony was added. The Salvationists remained there until 1955. For a few years from 1956 the building was a factory and showroom for Beck's British Carnival Novelties, then remained empty until in 1972 a campaign began to turn it into a theatre. The building was Grade II listed by English Heritage in 1972. The current modified building retains the listing.

The campaign to open the building as a theatre was led by the Lebanese-born opera and theatre director Pierre Audi, after he had acquired the derelict building in 1979. A public appeal was launched and in 1980, with the building renovated, the theatre opened with a festival of avant-garde music and performance, held both there and at other Islington venues, with Audi as the Artistic Director. Under Audi the theatre's reputation grew and its annual contemporary music festival became highly regarded.

The Almeida International Festival of Contemporary Music and Performance included concert presentations and productions of new and commissioned operas from Europe, Russia, North America, Japan, Argentina, and Morocco. Among the hundreds of composers, musicians and ensembles featured in frequent world and local premiere performances were Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Frederic Rzewski, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke, Wolfgang Rihm, Claude Vivier, Toru Takemitsu, Giacinto Scelsi, Michael Finnissy, Gerald Barry, Somei Satoh, Akio Suzuki, Takehisa Kosugi, Jo Kondo, Sylvano Bussotti, Luis de Pablo, Capricorn, Spectrum, Music Projects/London, Singcircle, the Arditti Quartet, and the London Sinfonietta. Peter Greenaway's 1983 series of films for Channel 4 Four American Composers featured Almeida presentations of works by John Cage, Robert Ashley and Philip Glass. In 1985 Ástor Piazzolla, the renowned Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player, made a week-long appearance with his Quinteto Nuevo Tango. For several years, the American pianist and composer Yvar Mikhashoff conceived and co-ordinated concert programming, including At the Tomb of Charles Ives: A Celebration of American Experimental Music 1905-1985 which featured world and UK premieres of works by Cage, Nancarrow, Glass, Feldman, Harrison, Rzewski, Charles Ives, George Antheil, Henry Brant, Anthony Braxton, Carla Bley, Roger Reynolds, Charles Wuorinen, and Lukas Foss and two piano marathons he performed himself: The Great American Piano Marathon: 70 works from 70 years in 7 Hours and 50 Tangos - 50 Composers - A Tango Marathon: Selections from the International Tango Collection. The Almeida housed a producing company which commissioned and staged several theatre works and operas and was a London "receiving house" for Fringe, avant-garde, regional and international theatre productions. Touring companies from the UK were regularly hosted, including Complicité, Shared Experience, Joint Stock, Cheek by Jowl and the Leicester Haymarket, alongside international guest companies from the Philippines, Tibet, Israel, Ireland and Czechoslovakia. Stage directors of Almeida Theatre Company productions included Pierre Audi, Ian McDiarmid, Yuri Lyubimov, Tim Albery, Mike Bradwell, David Hayman, and Jean Jourdheuil. Works by directors Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Phelim McDermott, Julia Bardsley, Deborah Warner, Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden and several others were featured in Almeida presentations. Peter Brook's Bouffes du Nord company played there in 1982 (Brook's company had been one of Audi's original influences for the project). The 1985 Almeida Theatre Company production of The Possessed, a co-production with the Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris which also toured to the Piccolo Teatro in Milan and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, was Russian director Yuri Lyubimov's first to originate in the West after he defected in 1983 and featured music by Alfred Schnittke, design by Stefanos Lazaridis, and actors Nigel Terry, Clive Merrison, Harriet Walter, and Michael Feast. Ronald Harwood's documentary drama, The Deliberate Death of a Polish Priest premiered at the Almeida in October 1985, an early example of a transcript of a trial of the political murderers of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. In 1987, the Almeida also became home to Motley Theatre Design Course, under the directorship of Margaret Harris. The Not the RSC Festival was presented at the Almeida in 1986 and 1987.

In 1990 the Scot Ian McDiarmid and the South African Jonathan Kent took over as joint artistic directors. McDiarmid's first production as director was Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution, with Glenda Jackson in the lead. Work by major playwrights, old and new, British and foreign was staged and the theatre acquired an artistic reputation comparable to the leading theatres in central London. According to playwright David Hare, "it reinvented the European repertoire for London audiences and made British theatre more cosmopolitan and outward going". Organised as a non-profit producing theatre, its productions regularly played to packed houses and frequently (14 productions between 1990 and 2002) transferred to London's West End and to New York's Broadway. In 1993 the theatre won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. One of the keys to the success and reputation of the Almeida during the 1990s were the stagings of various plays by Harold Pinter. These included revivals of Betrayal in 1991 and No Man's Land in 1992 and premières of Party Time in 1991 and Moonlight in 1993. During their time at the theatre, McDiarmid and Kent were described by The Guardian as "[making] Islington a centre of enlightened internationalism"; and, as they were about to leave their positions in 2002, Michael Billington, in same newspaper, summed up their achievements as threefold:

Available at this venue:

• Wheelchair-accessible entrance
• Wheelchair-accessible toilet

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