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Warehouse Theatre
215px Logo of the Warehouse Theatre
Address	Dingwall Road, Croydon, CR0 2NF
City	Croydon, London
Country	United Kingdom
Coordinates	51°22′30″N 0°05′38″W / 51.3749°N 0.0938°W / 51.3749; -0.0938Coordinates: 51°22′30″N 0°05′38″W / 51.3749°N 0.0938°W / 51.3749; -0.0938
Owned by	Warehouse Theatre Company Ltd
Capacity	100
Opened	1977
Years active	31
Rebuilt	2010
Current use	Theatre performances
www.warehousetheatre.co.uk

The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing theatre with one hundred seats in the centre of the London Borough of Croydon,^[1] south London, England^[2] based in an oak-beamed former cement Victorian warehouse. It is known for its commitment to new writing, including its annual International Playwriting Festival, in partnership with the Extra Candoni Festival of Udine in Italy and Theatro Ena in Cyprus.^{[citation needed]} Youth theatre is also important, with the resident Croydon Young Peoples' Theatre (CRYPT) and including an annual collaboration with the Croydon-based Brit School. Within the building there is also a popular CaféBar.

History[link]

The Warehouse Theatre was founded by Sam Kelly, Richard Ireson and Adrian Shergold when lunchtime theatre was particularly popular, with the aim of presenting a varied season of plays with an emphasis on new work to the highest possible standards.^{[citation needed]} The first production — Hell's Angels on Typewriters by Angela Wye — opened in May 1977,^[3] and the then 50 seat auditorium became an instant favourite with local audiences for lunchtime performances whilst sharing the building with a Caribbean night club.

In 1978, the Arts Council recognised the work of the theatre by awarding a major grant and in 1979 the nightclub closed, evening performances were introduced and the seating capacity was increased to 100. Respected touring companies began to visit the theatre between in-house productions.^{[citation needed]} Cabaret evenings were introduced, with performers including Lenny Henry, French & Saunders, Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Julian Clary. Gradually more plays were premiered, with many being specially commissioned by successful writers, such as Sue Townsend, who wrote Groping for Words and Womberang for the theatre.

After the withdrawal of an Arts Council grant in 1984, potential closure was averted when the London Borough of Croydon and the GLC agreed to replace the grant. Following a brief closure for major refurbishment, including the building of the bar, the theatre re-opened in 1985 under the directorship of Ted Craig with the premiere of David Allen's Cheapside.

Now concentrating exclusively on new playwriting, initiatives such as the South London Playwriting Festival were launched, giving an invaluable platform to works by both new and established writers. Kevin Hood's compelling new play Beached won the first festival in 1986 and he later became Resident Playwright, writing both The Astronomer's Garden and Sugar Hill Blues for the theatre.

International Playwriting Festival[link]

The South London Playwriting Festival quickly became the International Playwriting Festival, reflecting the number of entries from all over the globe. Finalists have included playwrights from the USA, Trinidad and Tobago, Australia and Bulgaria, with the 1994 winner, Dino Mahoney, being half Irish, half Greek, living in Hong Kong. Dino's selected play Yo Yo had its premiere here in April 1995. In 1996, the Warehouse Theatre inaugurated a partnership with the leading Italian playwriting festival, the Premio Candoni Arta Terme and in 1999 a partnership was also formed with Theatro Ena in Cyprus providing selected writers with a window for further productions in Europe. The new writers discovered by the festival have since gone from strength to strength and further productions, radio and screen contracts, and success with other work has followed, including James Martin Charlton, Sheila Dewey, Richard Vincent, Mark Norfolk, Maggie Neville and Roumen Shomov.

The building[link]

The Warehouse Theatre is a converted Victorian warehouse, built in 1882 for a sand, cement and lime merchant. In spite of refurbishments, it still has several original features. There are picture tiles from the 1880s, mostly on the cellar under the main staircase, and a "crab" winch and wall crane of unusual design in full working order on the side of the building. Early drawings show that the bar, opened in 1985, is actually sited in the old stable block, with the eating area above in the appropriately named "Hayloft" bar.

But the Victorian charm of the building does have its less engaging side. The removal of a false ceiling in 1981 uncovered the planked roof and vast beams and tresses of the original holes in the original roof to let in the original rain over audience and cast alike.

Space is another problem. The office looks like a cupboard crossed with a corridor and is actually another entrance to the auditorium. In fact, until 1985 it was the entrance and many bemused latecomers are still escorted up the backstairs and past the kitchen to avoid walking through the scenery. With so little room to manoeuvre, one (unnamed) actress was once forced to crawl along a wooden beam in the roof in order to reach her entrance after she had left by the wrong door the scene before!

But the problems have helped to encourage the ingenuity and imagination in staging and design for which the Warehouse Theatre is rightly acclaimed - and cheerfulness in adversity has seen staff and audiences alike through many a minor crisis.

Ruskin Square development[link]

For some years a new theatre has been planned in partnership with Stanhope / Schroders as part of their Ruskin Square development.^[4] Designed by Foster + Partners around a park setting with the Warehouse Theatre occupying a £5 million, 200 seat custom designed building. Although a complete contrast to the existing Victorian warehouse, the new building has been designed to be as intimate as possible.

Croydon Arena scheme[link]

Croydon Arena was a proposed arena part of the Croydon Gateway re-generation scheme in the south London district of Croydon. The site is next to East Croydon station and has been in the ownership of the rival development, Ruskin Square.^[4]

The Arena scheme was backed by Croydon Council with developer partner Arrowcroft. The matter was the subject of a public inquiry that took place from September to November 2007.

The full decision rejecting the Planning Application and the Compulsory Purchase Order was issued on the 31 July 2008 and the 6 August 2008.^{[citation needed]}

The future[link]

The Warehouse Theatre Company will remain in the present building during the new development (delayed because of the recession) which will enable the move to its new premises with minimal disruption.

The Warehouse Theatre will be launching its largest fund-raising appeal in its 33 year history in the near future^[when?] to help it launch itself into the new building.^{[citation needed]} Fund-raising will be required for finishing touches to the new building, technical equipment, launch programme and a host of other vital expenditure to ensure the Warehouse Theatre is launched into its new future on a firm footing.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Warehouse Theatre, Croydon

• Warehouse Theatre website

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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2011)

Joyce Johnson
Johnson at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival
Born	Joyce Glassman 1935 Queens, New York, United States
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Notable work(s)	Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

Joyce Johnson (born 1935) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir Minor Characters about her relationship with Jack Kerouac.

Personal life[link]

Born Joyce Glassman to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, Joyce was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a few blocks from the apartment of Joan Vollmer Adams where William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac lived from 1944-46. She was a child actress and appeared in the Broadway production of I Remember Mama, which she writes about in her 2004 memoir Missing Men.

At the age of 13, Joyce rebelled against her controlling parents and began hanging out in Washington Square. She matriculated at Barnard College at 16, failing her graduation by one class. It was at Barnard that she became friends with Elise Cowen (briefly Allen Ginsberg's lover) who introduced her to the Beat circle. Ginsberg arranged for Glassman and Kerouac to meet on a blind date while she was working on her first novel, which was sold to Random House when she was only twenty-one and appeared five years later in 1962 just as she was starting her long career as a book editor.

Joyce was married briefly to abstract painter James Johnson, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. From her second marriage to painter Peter Pinchbeck, which ended in divorce, came her son, Daniel Pinchbeck, also an author.

Career[link]

Johnson's fiction and articles have appeared in Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, New York, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and the Washington Post. She has written several novels, including Come and Join the Dance (1961) and Bad Connections (1978).

In Minor Characters (Houghton Mifflin, 1983) she looked back at the years 1957 and 1958, the time when Kerouac rose from obscurity to fame with the publication of On the Road. Johnson brought attention to the experiences of women associated with the Beat Generation writers. Other memoirs and anthologies have since been published by and about women of the Beat Generation.^[1]

Since 1983 she has taught writing, primarily at Columbia University's MFA program, but also at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, the University of Vermont and New York University. "The Children's Wing," the penultimate chapter of her novel In The Night Cafe (1989), was a first-prize O. Henry Award recipient. In 1992 she received an NEA grant.

The Johnson and Kerouac correspondence, collected in Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958 (2000) was followed by another memoir, Missing Men (2004).

Bibliography[link]

• Come and join the dance. Atheneum. 1962. http://books.google.com/books?id=V9vPAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 10 September 2011.  (as Joyce Glassman)
• Bad connections. Putnam. 1978. ISBN ISBN 0-39-912122-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=w-ewAAAAIAAJ. Retrieved 10 September 2011. 
• Minor Characters: a young woman's coming-of-age in the beat orbit of Jack Kerouac. Penguin. 1 July 1999. ISBN 978-0-14-028357-0. 
• In the Night Café. Fontana. 31 May 1990. ISBN 978-0-00-654282-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=GB4zptLqdRQC. Retrieved 10 September 2011. 
• What Lisa knew: the truths and lies of the Steinberg case. Kensington. 1 April 1991. ISBN 978-0-8217-3387-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=j-P-puJZPmYC. Retrieved 10 September 2011. 
• Jack Kerouac; Joyce Johnson (2000). Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-89040-8. 
• Missing Men: A Memoir. Penguin. 5 July 2005. ISBN 978-0-14-303523-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=7qORmUXXAFwC. Retrieved 10 September 2011. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• 10/2007 UK Guardian interview with Johnson and her own development through 50s
• 2007 Vanity Fair article by Johnson about Kerouac and the Beats
• Critical Mass: Interview with Joyce Johnson (August 20, 2007)
• Artful Dodge: 1999 interview with Joyce Johnson