‘You need the community’: Meet the actors building Hackney’s newest theatre

Avital Lvova and James Alexandrou want to encourage experimentation. Photographs: courtesy Distrikt Communications

Hackney is about to get another theatre.

Playhouse East is a 100-seat venue opening this Christmas in Haggerston with the aim of fostering innovative writing.

The duo behind the venture, Avital Lvova and James Alexandrou, are actors who have long run the studio Actors East, formerly based in Dalston.

The plan for their new site is to create an accessible space where aspiring writers from all backgrounds can try out ideas and put on new work for audiences to see.

I caught up with the husband-and-wife team at the building on Kingsland Road that they are in the final stages of renovating.

Arriving, I walked into the tail end of a rehearsal of their inaugural play Casserole, which has already been staged at the Arcola.

In between rehearsals, they are putting finishing touches on the building itself, having been working on the project for a year now.

Maybe I looked around a bit too dubiously – it does have a very work-in-progress feel to it – but they were eager to reassure me that it would be all ready in time for their opening performance later in the month.

This is an indisputably stunning venue, with high ceilings and interesting angles. 

There will eventually be a café together with studio spaces.

The space is ‘indisputably stunning’. Image: David Foulkes

In fact, people are already beavering away in corners of the labyrinthine, 5000-square foot building, which houses a variety of businesses: prop makers, a post-production company, and a recording studio.

I asked how the idea for Playhouse East emerged, and Lvova told me: “I guess things just kind of happen organically because both of us were in the industry.

“I’m an actor. James is an actor-director-writer. So, every time we work, we just bring people back from the industry, into our building.”

Their plans are for fully-developed productions that run for a month or more, but also scene nights where aspiring writers can try out a short piece on a live audience and see how it is received. If things go well, they will then be offered studio time and help in building up the idea.

As Alexandrou explained: “We’re trying to build a model which encourages whoever to come in and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this weird show I want to do, I want to just experiment in front of an audience where I put a banana in my ear for two hours.’ Great! You could go do that at 10pm on Thursday.

“We want to encourage experimentation, but on top of that have very high quality.”

The pair specialise in improvisation, aligned with group theatre principles where what matters is human stories and contact with others. This spirit is clearly a driving force behind what they are doing.

As I am about to leave, Alexandrou adds: “I’d just like to say, more personally, we’re literally theatre-makers right now, not just making plays but building the theatre, which is incredibly difficult to do.

“And you need a lot of naivety and ignorance and stupidity to do it, which we have been abundance. But also, you need the community.

“Our intention is to be what theatre is, which is a centrepoint. This isn’t just a closed, weird little acting studio which maybe we were before, but it’s a more open, public-facing place where we want to really build a following amongst the local community.”

You can go along to help make this tantalising project come to life at the theatre’s début performance on 12 December.

Casserole runs from 12-19 December at Playhouse East at 258 Kingsland Road.

For more information, head to playhouseeast.com.