Theatre on water

A NEW theatre based on a widebeam opened in London last week, that will cruise the waterways of the city staging its shows.

The aptly named Waterhouse Theatre has been fitted to hold an audience of 50, with it being created by the Vacuum Theatre Company at a cost of £160,000, and as well as staging its own productions it will be hosting touring companies and commissioned work, Roger Fox tells us.

Theatre to communities

The aim is to bring the theatre to communities, with initially the idea being to rent a piece of land, but it was discovered that renting places and a few years of rent coupled with business rates would have been the same amount of money as buying the boat, and it would never have been theirs.

The company paid £150,000 for the barge and spent around £10,000 refurbishing the interior to make it suitable for staging productions, with Artistic Director Kit Redstone telling that the floating venue felt like an act of defiance. She added:

Less financially viable

"It's very hard nowadays to fund work—it's become less and less financially viable to make a living from the kind of theatre that we make."

The Waterhouse Theatre opened with On the Table, Under the Bed—a Vacuum production that will run  to the 30th December on the Regent's Canal near Victoria Park.