Mel Zumrutel asks if working class East Londoners will see the inside of the region’s latest theatre.
Theatre Royal Stratford East has announced that in 2015 it will open an additional, temporary theatre on the opposite side of Gerry Raffles Square.
With an estimated lifespan of 10 years, the Red Crate promises to double the number of theatrical performances available in Stratford.
Described as ‘groundbreaking’ by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson, the eco-friendly building will ‘enhance Stratford’s cultural offer’, adding to East London’s ‘burgeoning cultural quarter’ by creating a vibrant destination to boost the night time economy.
But who will be in the audience?
Will the Red Crate appeal mainly to upmarket incomers into what is still, more than two years after London 2012, one of the largest regeneration areas in Europe? Or will it stay true to the legacy of Joan Littlewood, born 100 years ago this year, who formed Theatre Workshop and established it in the previously derelict Theatre Royal in Stratford in 1953, in order to offer genuinely popular theatre to the largely working class population of East London.
It would be odd if Joan Littlewood and her company had put up with all kinds of hardships, including sleeping in its dingy dressing rooms while they redecorated the Theatre Royal, only for the new addition to their theatre to be colonised 60 years later by the up and coming middle classes.
Or perhaps there will no such stratification. It would be good if the Red Crate could extend the role of theatre as a great leveller, bringing both rich and poor to the same imaginative re-telling of human experience.