Canonbury Tower, viewed from the northwest
Stoke Newington’s old Sunstone Gym
The Tower Theatre Company is a performing non-professional acting group based in the St Bride Institute (on the site of the former Bridewell Palace), in the City of London. The building also contains the Bridewell Theatre, which is used for the majority of Tower Theatre Company performances.
The group presents about 18 productions each year in London, either at their base theatre, or at other small theatres in the London area. During the summer months they also perform touring productions, with regular appearances at the open-air Théâtre de Verdure, which is in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall.
The acting company was founded, as the Tavistock Repertory Company, in 1932 at the Tavistock Little Theatre in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury (and so has nothing to do with the town of Tavistock in Devon). In 1952, it moved to its own premises in Islington at Canonbury Tower which included a 156-seat theatre known as the Tower Theatre. Over the years it has mounted nearly 1500 productions. Unlike many other non-professional groups, the Tower Theatre's productions have always been mounted in publicly licensed theatres, with tickets sold to the general public rather than just to members.
The lease in Canonbury expired in 2003 and since then the company has been searching for suitable new premises. It commissioned a new theatre at a site just off Curtain Road, in Shoreditch, London Borough of Hackney, but due to funding difficulties, it has now abandoned plans to proceed with the project. However, it is expected that another arts charity will be building the new theatre on the site, broadly to the same plans.[1]
The thetre company subsequently converted Stoke Newington’s old Sunstone Gym – a women-only facility which turned off the treadmills for the last time in 2014 - into a fully equipped 120-seat theatre – complete with rehearsal rooms, box office, wardrobe and props storage, and mingling space for audiences.[2]
Harold Bennett worked at the Tower Theatre Company as a stage producer, following his service in World War 1[3]