As the King’s Head Theatre gets ready to reopen in its new Islington space with Exhibitionists, we chatted to Sofi Berenger, Executive Producer and Acting CEO for Fringe Focus.
Exhibitionists runs from 5 Jan-10 Feb with details and tickets at: https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/exhibitionists
The return of King’s Head Theatre is excellent news. It’s now a main house and cabaret space rather than a pub theatre. What’s changed, and what has stayed the same?
Well the obvious one is that the building itself is fundamentally different and much much bigger.
Instead of our room behind a pub, we’re now on 5 storeys, with a lift, and have two bars, two performance spaces, the cabaret space.
The theatre itself is also over double the capacity. So, what we can do with the space now, creatively and practically, is so different in a very exciting way.
Secondly, it’s an entirely purpose-built space, we’ve been working with Islington Square since the dawn of the development here over a decade ago and this building was always set aside to build a theatre in.
This is through every bit of the building – we have a back of house lift for load in, our dressing rooms are no longer the infamous leaking room with a broken toilet but instead we have two full ensuites for our cast to use and shower.
The theatre is fully flexible so you can use it in any configuration with 5x potential audience entrance points, the lighting grid is the full space so you can hang lighting anywhere.
Working with us will be so much easier and I think that’ll mean artists are really able to creatively flourish in the space.
But, our heart is the same.
Our nice new exterior hasn’t changed our legacy of being one of London’s oldest fringe theatres, we’re still mavericks, we’re still home for incredible new talent to grow, we’re still firmly within the LGBTQ+ community, we’re still the Kings Head.
The theatre doesn’t have a permanent artistic director. Is this a conscious decision to encourage new perspectives and ideas for the venue?
We brought in the guest artistic director programme to see out the programming of the pub theatre and trial a new way of working, a new way of thinking, a new way of creative leadership – why have one artistic director when we could have four!
With support from the Arts Council we were able to experiment, play, learn, listen, respond and try a new approach. Each artistic director brought a new perspective, new practise, new types of production and introduced us to new types of artists.
We’ve always tried to do things a little bit differently, and creative leadership models is just one of the ways we want to shake up London’s Off West End theatre scene.
Now, we’re using everything we learnt on that project to explore even more ideas for our future. We’re very excited by the potential of new artistic models. So watch this space.
What are the plans for the cabaret space, and where does this sit within the wider London fringe scene?
It was so important to us that as we grow up, take on a new scale of work and with it new types of pressure that we didn’t lose our spirit, or our place within small-scale and grassroots fringe work.
So our cabaret space is letting us do exactly that; it’s the main space’s naughty little sibling and it lets us to have some real rollicking good fun. It’ll host a variety of work – stand up, cabaret, drag, comedy and the intersections between.
It’ll be a new essential contribution to London’s queer late-night arts scene, but by being part of a larger theatre we hope it’ll become a real vital space for artists to push their work into new settings, grow with us to new scales, and introduce work to new audiences.
The cabaret space will ensure we have up to a dozen different shows a week, so diverse audiences will always be able to find something exciting on at Kings Head Theatre.
The first official production at the new theatre will be a world premiere of Exhibitionists by Shaun McKenna and Andrew Van Sickle. It heads up an intriguing new season of queer work. Why this particular play?
Well, firstly we don’t have seasons of queer work – we’re a theatre with the LGBTQ+ community at its heart. In our office, it may as well be Pride every month.
When Exhibitionists came across my desk, we were looking for something which represented who the Kings Head was, how it had grown and who we would become, and it was perfect for that.
Our founding artistic director Dan Crawford had a real commitment to new writing, plays, and premiers, which this is, and it feels reminiscent of some of that early stuff.
It’s gay, but in a way where why wouldn’t you just have a fun romantic comedy on stage which its main characters just are gay – it’s not about the queer experience necessarily, or gay trauma, it’s about life and love, it’s for everyone, not just the LGBTQ+ community.
And it’s just darn good playwriting – Shaun and Andrew have approached a really classic ensemble comedy which I’m just so excited to see come to life.
With the loss of Vauxhall’s Above The Stag as a centre for LGBTQ+ work in London, does the King’s Head look to diversify more into that space with the new venue?
Under former artistic director Adam Spreadbury-Maher I’d say King’s Head already was really already kindred spirits with Above The Stag, harmoniously, a home for gay work North of the river to sit complementary to their South.
We will absolutely be continuing in that tradition, and in fact have teamed up with the Above The Stag team on Eurovision: Your Decision in May.
But we’re also really focussing on diversifying within the community as well – you’ll be able to see work which fully represents the rainbow flag.
We’re a home for the entire queer theatre making community and we love to embrace stories that haven’t been told before, in ways that haven’t yet been invented.
It’s also really important to us that queer work doesn’t have to only attract queer audiences, and we want to make sure we’re doing that too.
Do you think Dan Crawford would have approved and applauded the new venue, and is it important to recognise and continue his legacy?
We’d like to think so! We’ve been thinking about Dan and his legacy at every turn.
Dan may not have used the word queer, but he was a maverick, and he did create a home for the outcasts to make sure they were represented and have a voice in the mainstream. And I think we’re doing exactly that.
But we’ll specifically be honouring Dan and his legacy through our sponsor a stair campaign – where 53 stairs in our new theatre will highlight a production for each of the 53 years of the pub theatre…not to mention, we still share a wall with the old dressing room!
So Dan’s legacy, and our roots, will never be far away.