Soho Theatre previews Walthamstow venue

Soho Theatre have been previewing their new venue in Walthamstow, at an event today. The 1000 seater auditorium is due to become a major venue for comedy in London when it is launched in 2022.

The former EMD Cinema (and, previous to that, Granada Cinema) hasn't been open to the public in 18 years. In its heyday it hosted music performances from the likes of the Beatles, and was where Alfred Hitchcock watched films as a child. Following a complete redevelopment, the venue will re-open with a strong focus on comedy programming.

An artist's impression of what the venue will look like when it's finished has been released (pictured above).

Speaking about the project, Shappi Khorsandi, who is a Soho Theatre Trustee, explains: "After 20 years of running one of UK's very best venues for comedy on Dean Street, this next step for Soho Theatre is amazing. I've performed in the borough many times over the years. I'm so excited to see this historic Waltham Forest building be given a new lease of life. The ambition is to create the finest theatre for comedy in the UK sitting between London's more intimate spaces and the bigger arenas - which is brilliant news for performers and audiences."

Pictures

The venue before the refurbishment started:

The venue now, May 2019:

Artistic impression of the finished venue:

Speech

Below is the speech that David Luff, the Creative Director of Soho Theatre, gave this morning:

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The journey to announcing the new theatre today has been one with so many different people involved. From grassroots campaigners, to local businesses, to the Waltham Forest Council - Claire and Martin in particular - to the team at Soho Theatre; there have been literally hundreds of people willing this project into being. It's really important at the outset to acknowledge all of the hard work - the energy and desire - put in to bring about the revival of this hugely important local cultural landmark. This local enthusiasm and commitment to the former EMD/Granada building informs the way that we at Soho Theatre approach the next phase of development. We intend to harness the energy of this local community to create a new theatre - one that respects its heritage, but that is reinvented for the future.

A lot of us are local to North East London and Waltham Forest in particular. I've lived in Hackney and Tottenham for the best part of two decades and our executive team is made up of Walthamstow and Leyton locals. Re-opening this building has been a project close to our hearts for many years - working with the Council, the Waltham Forest Cinema Trust, the McGuffins and Save Walthamstow Cinema - and building up education and community links over the past seven years including an open-access Parks Project, playwriting projects for primary school children, and theatre groups for teenagers. All of this has informed our vision of the new venue being a local theatre with a national profile.

What do we mean when we say "local theatre"? It's crucial for us that the local Walthamstow and wider Waltham Forest communities feel a part of the building - that this is a new, approachable and accessible cultural hub. We will establish ticket discounts and priority booking for local audiences. There will be education and community programmes for people for all ages and diverse backgrounds. We'll have a focus on local schools, a youth theatre, and career days for young people. We want to create local jobs and to be a driver for regeneration in the Borough. This year - the inaugural Borough of Culture - has shown us just how much excitement there is in Waltham Forest for culture - culture in all its diverse, eclectic and varied glory. We want to build on this and enhance the cultural offer for the Borough.

For those who don't know us, Soho Theatre started as a small but influential fringe theatre in the 70s and opened our West End venue twenty years ago. We operate as a charity and social enterprise and are now one of London's busiest theatres with a festival programme showing six shows a night across three spaces. Our programme has the feel of the Edinburgh Fringe - working across theatre, comedy and cabaret - and a great bar and café which during the day serves London's arts community. It's a vital hub for writers and comedians. We tour our work throughout the UK and also occasionally internationally. Our hit play Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, was recently in New York and we will be producing it again soon in the West End.

As a performance space, the new theatre will be many things. It originally hosted cine-variety and we want to continue this tradition by programming music, circus and large-scale performance, even red-carpet screenings of independent films or major events like the Olympics opening ceremony. But the key and most important element to our vision for Walthamstow is comedy. Comedy has defined a major part of Soho's programme over the years. We've hosted some of the best and very biggest names in the world. Comedians like Trevor Noah, Hannah Gadsby, Michael McIntyre, Sara Pascoe, Eddie Izzard and of course, Shappi Khorsandi. It's this strand of our work - world-class comedy - which will form the core vision for our Walthamstow programme and it's what we mean by building a national profile for the new venue.

At Soho Theatre we have a superb platform for emerging talent, and elsewhere in London there are excellent large-scale arenas for comedy. But with our new theatre here in Walthamstow we have an opportunity to create the very best venue in the country for comedy: a beautifully restored, bespoke fitted out, one thousand seat venue - a theatre in which every seat is a good seat - at affordable prices. It's a venue which will create an amazing intimacy between performer and audience but one big enough to bring in the very best in world comedy.

We are privileged to be part of the process in bringing back to life this magnificent building, respecting its heritage, whilst re-inventing it for the future. Creating for Waltham Forest, and for London, a local theatre with a national profile.