Hampstead Theatre
theatre in Hampstead, London, England
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in South Hampstead, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers.
History
The original Hampstead Theatre Club was formed in 1959, in Moreland Hall, a parish church school hall in Holly Bush Vale, Hampstead. James Roose-Evans was the founder and first Artistic Director, and the 1959–1960 season included The Dumb Waiter and The Room by Harold Pinter, Eugène Ionesco's Jacques and The Sport of My Mad Mother by Ann Jellicoe.
In 1962, the company moved to a "temporary" prefabricated building with an audience capacity of 157 on land now occupied by Swiss Cottage Library and adjoining leisure centre. It remained there until 2003, when the purpose-built Hampstead Theatre became the first completely new theatre to open in London since the National Theatre in 1975. 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.
In 2022, Arts Council England removed the theatre's public funding.
Artistic directors
James Roose-Evans (1959–1971)
Vivian Matalon (1971–1973)
Michael Rudman (1973–1978)
David Aukin (1978–1984)
Michael Attenborough (1984–1988)
Jenny Topper (1988–2003)
Anthony Clark (2003–2010)
Edward Hall (2010–2019)
Roxana Silbert (2019–2022)
Playwrights
Playwrights who have had their early work produced at the theatre include:
Notes
References
Sources
Roose-Evans, James (2010).
The public source identifies “Hampstead Theatre” as theatre in Hampstead, London, England. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hampstead, Theatre and theatre.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15222684. Authority coordinates are 51.543, -0.174. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1960, 1962 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hampstead Theatre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.