Hampstead Theatre is a

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...

South Hampstead South Hampstead is part of the London Borough of Camden in inner north London. It is commonly defined as the area between West End Lane in the west, the Chiltern Main Line (south), Broadhurst Gardens north and north-west followed by a non-road ...

in the

London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and S ...

. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. Roxana Silbert has been the artistic director since 2019.

History

The original theatre (The Hampstead Theatre Club) was created in 1959 in Moreland Hall, a parish church school hall in Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead Village. James Roose-Evans was the founder and first Artistic Director, and the 1959–1960 season included ''

The Dumb Waiter ''The Dumb Waiter'' is a one-act play by Harold Pinter written in 1957. "Small but perfectly formed, ''The Dumb Waiter'' might be considered the best of Harold Pinter's early plays, more consistent than ''The Birthday Party'' and sharper tha ...

'' and '' The Room'' by

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that span ...

Eugène Ionesco Eugène Ionesco (; born Eugen Ionescu, ; 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco inst ...

's ''Jacques'' and ''The Sport of My Mad Mother'' by

Ann Jellicoe Patricia Ann Jellicoe (15 July 1927 – 31 August 2017) was an English playwright, theatre director and actress. Although her work covered many areas of theatre and film, she is best known for "pushing the envelope" of the stage play, devising ...

. In 1962 the company moved to a portable cabin in

Swiss Cottage Swiss Cottage is an area of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden, England. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and includes Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage lies north-northwest of Charing Cross. Th ...

where it remained for nearly 40 years, before, in 2003, the new purpose-built Hampstead Theatre opened in Swiss Cottage. The main auditorium seats 373 people. The studio theatre, Hampstead Downstairs, seats up to 100 people and was turned into a laboratory for new writing in 2010.

Artistic directors

* James Roose-Evans (1959–1971) *

Vivian Matalon Vivian Matalon (11 October 1929 – 15 August 2018) was a British theatre director. Born in Manchester, Matalon began his career as an actor in a series of forgettable British films, but his greatest success has been as a director of West End, ...

(1971–1973) *

Michael Rudman Michael Rudman (born February 14, 1939) is an American theatre director. Early life Rudman graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas in 1956, and four years later, graduated cum laude from Oberlin College with a degree in Government. In 1964, he ...

(1973–1978) *

David Aukin David Aukin (born 12 February 1942) is a theatrical and executive producer as well as a qualified solicitor. He has been nominated many times for British Academy Television Awards and has won twice for producing films about Tony Blair: ''The Gove ...

(1978–1984) *

Michael Attenborough Michael John Attenborough (born 13 February 1950) is an English theatre director. Background Attenborough was born on 13 February 1950 in London, the only son of actress Sheila Sim and actor-director Richard Attenborough. He is the nephew ...

(1984–1988) * Jenny Topper (1988–2003) * Anthony Clark (2003–2010) *

Edward Hall Edward Hall ( – ) was an English lawyer and historian, best known for his ''The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke''—commonly known as ''Hall's Chronicle''—first published in 1548. He was also sever ...

(2010–2019) * Roxana Silbert (2019– )

Playwrights

Playwrights who have had their early work produced at the theatre include: * Mike Bartlett * Simon Block * Al Blyth *

Jeremy Brock Jeremy Brock MBE (born 1959) is a British writer and director whose works include the screenplays '' Mrs Brown'', ''Driving Lessons'', ''The Last King of Scotland'', '' Charlotte Gray'', and '' The Eagle''. Brock has also written two plays for ...

Michael Frayn Michael Frayn, FRSL (; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce '' Noises Off'' and the dramas ''Copenhagen'' and ''Democracy''. His novels, such as '' Towards the End of the M ...

Brian Friel Brian Patrick Friel (c. 9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015) was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company. He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. (subscription requ ...

Rebecca Gilman Rebecca Gilman (born 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American playwright. Education She attended Middlebury College, graduated from Birmingham-Southern College, and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the Univer ...

* Daniel Hill * Terry Johnson *

Dennis Kelly Dennis Kelly is a British scriptwriter for theatre, television and film. His play ''DNA'', first performed in 2007, became a core set-text for GCSE in 2010 and has been studied by approximately 400,000 students each year. He wrote the book ...

Hanif Kureishi Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, ''The Times'' included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Early l ...

Mike Leigh Mike Leigh (born 20 February 1943) is an English film and theatre director, screenwriter and playwright. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and further at the Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Art and Des ...

Abi Morgan Abigail Louise Morgan (born 1968) is a Welsh playwright and screenwriter known for her works for television, such as ''Sex Traffic'' and '' The Hour'', and the films ''Brick Lane'', '' The Iron Lady'', '' Shame'' and '' Suffragette''. Early l ...

* Tom Morton-Smith *

Rona Munro Rona Munro (born 7 September 1959) is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television. Her film work includes Ken Loach's '' Ladybird, Ladybird'' (1994), ''Oranges and Sunshine'' (2010) for Jim Loach and ''Aimée & J ...

Nina Raine Nina Raine is an English theatre director and playwright, the only daughter of Craig Raine and Ann Pasternak Slater, and a grand niece of the Russian novelist Boris Pasternak. She graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1998 with a First in Eng ...

* Philip Ridley * Saman Shad * Martin Sherman * Shelagh Stephenson * Hugh Whitemore *

Crispin Whittell Crispin Whittell (born 19 December 1969 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a British director and playwright. He spent much of his early life in Africa. He was a member of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, and studied English at Cambridge Universi ...

* Roy Williams

References

External links

* * {{Theatres in London Theatres in the London Borough of Camden Producing house theatres in London Buildings and structures in Hampstead Swiss Cottage