Theatre – King's Cross Story Palace

1940s-2018 King's Cross, London UK

I think we forget

Jean Hart was born in the East End in 1931 and has lived in Kentish Town and its environs for the last 50 years. An actor, singer and educator she shares memories of her King’s Cross, starting with her evacuation on a steam train during WW2. WAR STORY “One little case also labelled” – Jean ...

1980s King's Cross, London UK

Two sides of King’s Cross

Séamus Rea was born in 1956, in Northern Ireland. He moved to the King’s Cross area in 1980, and has lived there ever since. Moving to King’s Cross represented an escape from the oppressive atmosphere that he had grown up in, as a young gay man. “It was an amazing, liberating experience to move to ...

1990 - 2018 Flaxman Terrace, London, UK

There is and there isn’t a community

Dr. Julia Pascal is a prize-winning Jewish atheist playwright and theatre director. After training and working as an actor in major theatres including The Royal Court Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, and The Royal Shakespeare Company, she turned her hand to directing becoming the first woman director at the National Theatre. Her plays focus on politics and ...

1890s-2018 King's Cross, London UK

Making art as if the world mattered

Lucy Neal has been ‘making art as if the world mattered’ ever since co-founding the London International Theatre Festival (LIFT) in 1981. LIFT brought participation, pyrotechnics and polyrhythms into the public realm, creating spaces for practitioners who were censored in their own countries. ‘Places remember events’ says Lucy, and Kings Cross was full of them. ...

1990 - 2018 King's Cross, London UK

A permanence in a place of impermanence

Amy Lamé (b. 1971), founder of legendary gay club Duckie, ended up as a resident of King’s Cross when she married a vicar, Jenny. The flat in Bloomsbury came with her wife’s job in the Anglican Church. Amy discovered it once housed orphaned girls from the Foundling Hospital, who were training as domestic servants. The ...

1986 King's Cross, London, UK

The Poor School

The Poor School was founded in 1986 by actor and director Paul Caister, in order to provide high quality, practical and affordable training for aspiring actors from all backgrounds. Paul has continued his groundbreaking work in the school up until the present day, but after ‘32 splendid years’, the school will be closing down in ...

1972 Crowndale Rd, London, UK

From life to art, and back to life again

George Eugeniou approaches playwriting as a cycle: it starts on the ground, with his community, where he embeds himself in the lives and struggles of the people around him. He then pours that experience back into the creative melting pot, and makes work that is rooted in the concerns of his time and place. This ...