About the Kiln Theatre

The Kiln is a producing theatre, run as a charity, which makes its own shows. Its Artistic Director is Amit Sharma, who took over in 2023. The building also has the Kiln Cinema, which shows films in its own auditorium of nearly 300 seats.

What was the Kiln Theatre called before?

The Tricycle Theatre. The name came from the Wakefield Tricycle Company, the touring company Shirley Barrie and Ken Chubb started, which took its name from a pub in King's Cross where it played lunchtime theatre. The company settled here in 1980 and the theatre kept the name until 2018.

What is the Kiln Theatre's history?

The building opened in 1929 as the Foresters' Hall, a meeting hall for a friendly society. The Tricycle Theatre opened inside it in 1980.

Under Nicolas Kent, Artistic Director from 1984 for 28 years, the Tricycle became known for political theatre, including plays built from the transcripts of public inquiries. In 1987 a fire from a timber yard next door destroyed the theatre, and it reopened in 1989. The cinema followed in 1998.

From 2016 to 2018 the building was rebuilt, with individual seats in place of benches, step-free access and better sightlines. It reopened as the Kiln in September 2018.

Notable past productions

• White Teeth (2018), a stage version of Zadie Smith's Kilburn novel, one of the first shows after the reopening
• The Son (2019), Florian Zeller's play about a father and his teenage son
• Blues in the Night (2019), the blues and jazz musical
• The Wife of Willesden (2021 and 2022), Zadie Smith's retelling of Chaucer's Wife of Bath, set in Kilburn
• Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) (2023), a two-hander musical
• Retrograde (2023), Ryan Calais Cameron's play about the young Sidney Poitier in 1950s Hollywood

Other venues to know

• Donmar Warehouse, 251 seats on Earlham Street in Seven Dials, another small producing theatre
• Charing Cross Theatre, up to 265 seats in the arches under Charing Cross station
• Menier Chocolate Factory, a small producing theatre on Southwark Street, by London Bridge