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The Performing Arts Story at Toynbee Hall:Breaking the Fourth Wall of Middle Class TheatreBehind forbidding facade of Victorian Toynbee Hall, lies one of London’s brighter theatrical enterprises

Researched and written by David Chia Jun Weng Toynbee Hall Make It! Development and Historical Archives Intern Jun-Aug

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��Introduction: The Performing Arts Story at Toynbee Hall

The start of the performing arts story is found at the University Settlement of Toynbee Hall in Aldgate East. Tucked within a charmingly set Victorian building, riddled with dark, draughty corridors and a typical Victorian gloom, the space was a gym for the imaginative mind. Violin students strove to fill corridors with melodic tensions; singing students echoed the halls in unison with their voices; while ballet students syncopated verses of Shakespearean tragedy with underlying desires to perfect pliés and pirouettes. Attended by both men and women from all subsections of East London, the singing, violin, orchestra, and musical drill classes at Toynbee Hall ran regularly oversubscribed. Seeping out of the confines of the classroom, Shakespeare societies and Musical unions were slowly being formalised; yet, they remained separate from each other. There wasn’t an anchor that unified artistic expression.

That - however - changed in 1938. . .

In September 1938, under Mallon’s wardenship, Toynbee Theatre was built. One of the first theatres to be built in East London, architect Alister MacDonald’s Toynbee Theatre sat an audience of 400. The cream walls, panelled with mahogany, featured the avant-garde art decor of Clive Gardiner which lined the sides of the proscenium. Dramatic elements of conceal and reveal were embodied in the ceiling. The 24 ft deep and 50 ft wide stage was curtained by a crimson-red that bore gravity to the boldness of the social idealism that would soon play behind it. Our disbelief is suspended the moment we enter Toynbee Theatre –– it was a space that would soon become the epicenter for artistic expression and change in the East End.

Directly a year after, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the start of World War II. Bombs and blackouts fragmented the lives of many.

Yet, the spirit of art remained active. In war shelters, verses of Shakespeare were recited aloud amidst the cacophonies of warfare outside; performing art classes, attended by refugees and proletariats alike, prevailed over occasional blackouts, dropping in numbers between 1940-1942, only to peak again in 1943. Winter Festivals created an avenue for curation, a therapy through the arts that attempted to bring order to the fractured emotional and spiritual domains of Tower Hamlets. In many ways. performing arts at Toynbee Hall broke the fourth-wall of its theatre, penetrating public spaces with symphony and choreography. indeed, the theatre became symbiotic with reality –– a choreography of performance in a sense had subverted the choreography of violence.

After the war, in 1945, the urbanscape of Toynbee Hall had dramatically changed. The warden lodge and library of Toynbee Hall were damaged by a bomb. And despite the war leaving a physical scar on Toynbee Hall, the performing arts quickly regained momentum. Under the direction of John Burrell, Toynbee’s Drama School survived the war, and provided opportunities for the ideas of Michel St Denis of pre-war London Theatre Studio to be experimented in the East End. Suria Magito, who had conducted drama classes at Toynbee during the war and who also worked closely with St Denis, established Children’s theatre.

The wealth of photographs and press cuttings suggested a rosy future for the arts at a time when the war had proved its growing popularity, when there was talk of a cultural renaissance, and when the Royal Charter established the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946.1 Toynbee Theatre in the 1940s was a platform for exploration, experimentation, and arts education for various communities of different social classes. It was often written about in dailies as being the “shopwindow” for West End theatres and was a daily sight to many well known actors, musicians, painters, and patrons: Val Gielgud, Tyrone Guthrie, Michel St Denis, and Irene Vanbrugh.

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Such enthusiasm and optimism for the arts - however - dipped in the 1950s when Toynbee Theatre was gravely affected by the lack of funding. On 1959, the Council of Toynbee Hall, under the wardenship of Dr. A. E. Morgan, issued a statement concerning a new venture to meet the increasing need for training of social workers. Funding to the Toynbee Theatre, thus, had to be slashed, resulting in the closure of the recreational block and theatre. That same year also marked the start of what many ‘Toynbeeians’ call the “Toynbee Tragedy”. During the ‘Five Nomadic Years’ - as it was called by ‘Toynbeeians’, the theatre stood empty, gathering dust hanging over the damp creeping in to spoil the decor and eating into electrical installations. Isolated from their own Home, Toynbee Players and the drama school functioned in various evening school halls, giving performances at diverse theatres in and around the East End.

Nothing happened. . .

Until 1964.

On April 1964, London County Council leased the building and renovated the theatre to be used as the drama center for the London Education Service.The theatre re-opened with the production of Oscar Wilde’s “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime” by Bertha Myers - the ‘Toynbeeian’ who fought hard for the theatre. When it re-opened, the theatre was immediately fully booked through to mid-way July.

While the ‘Toynbee Tragedy’ seemed to have been resolved in 1964, its denouement persisted in non-physical forms. The affinity between Toynbee Theatre and Toynbee Council which was alive during Mallon’s wardenship seems to have taken a bit of a toll after 1964; ‘Toynbeeians’ no longer felt connected to Toynbee Hall. Eventually, the emotional divorce sol idified when ‘Toynbee Players’ renamed themselves into the ‘Curtain Players’. On the perspective of Toynbee Hall, little evidence is

preserved about Toynbee Theatre or the Players after 1964, widening the gap between the performing arts and Toynbee Hall.

Alas –– the performing arts story at Toynbee Hall shifted its dynamics once more in 1984 when Arts Admin leased Toynbee Theatre from Toynbee Hall, retaining Toynbee’s original vision of being an arts lab and “shopwindow” for the East End. Toynbee Theatre is used today by Arts Admin for the creation of performance, site-specific and interdisciplinary, where the innovative, experimental, and unusual are nurtured. Toynbee’s performing arts legacy is preserved on the same vein, manifested over different names.

The Founding Years: Interweaving Performing Arts and EducationFrom its founding years all the way till the late 1960s, the performing arts at Toynbee Hall has been closely interwoven with education. “Before me lie handbills,” writes Henrietta Barnett, one of the founders of Toynbee Hall, “brown with age, which set out classes in singing, violin, literature, drawing, . . [and] musical drill.”2 Not only were the classes open to both men and women, an instance rare during the Victorian era, they also served as a catalyst to the establishment of many future performing arts societies and unions.

“MEN MUST HAVE KNOWLEDGE; AND THE MEANS WHICH FURNISH THE PRESENT WITH MEMORIES OF THE PAST, WHICH DEVELOP TASTE, DRAW OUT REVERENCE AND AID THE POWERS OF EXPRESSION, ARE AS IMPORTANT AS THOSE WHICH INCREASE WAGES.”

HENRIETTA BARNETT LETTERS3

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��Singing classes were taught by “Mr. W. Henry Thomas, the Professor of Singing at the Guildhall School of Music, and well-known conductor of the Popular Ballad Concerts”; whereas violin classes were taught by “Mr. Walter Truslove.”4 Mr. J. G. Goodchild conducts a successful yet experimental integrative music class in which sight singing, from the staff notation, is taught using the tonic sol-fa method.5 From free first lessons to small class sizes taught by experienced practitioners, performing art classes at Toynbee Hall embodied a spirit of exploration and expression under the individualised care of trained instructors.

Societies like the Orchestral Society, Shakespeare Society, and Popular Musical Union are formed as indirect consequences of these classes. The Orchestra Society recruits its members from the orchestral and violin classes; and the society’s choir is drawn from the advanced classes of the different centres at Toynbee Hall. As many of these classes comprise students from the immediate Tower Hamlets neighbourhood, such as the Working Men’s Club, Toynbee Hall has made accessible an artistic expression otherwise reserved for the London middle and upper classes.6 Knowledge of ‘high’-classical art forms such as ballet, violin, and Shakespeare has thus been democratised and dispersed amongst the working class of East London.

Indeed, this very synthesis of arts and education has led not only to the construction of Toynbee Theatre in 1938, but also the revolutionary avant-garde approaches to the performing arts from war-time England to late 1960s.

1938: The Epicentre of the Arts in the East EndOn 1938, Mallon commissioned to have Toynbee Theatre built. Architecturally one of its kind, the Theatre quickly soon after became the epicentre of the arts in the East End.

The arts played a huge role in Mallon’s life, and he brought to Toynbee Hall many well-known actors, musicians, painters, and patrons. Val Gielgud, Tyrone Guthrie, Michel St Denis and Irene Vanbrugh were among the visitors to the theatre. For the main purpose of the Theatre was to “focus all the education activities of Toynbee Hall”, music, orchestra, dance and drama classes alongside the clubs that formalised with it imbued an artistic synergy into the Theatre.

The Theatre was by no means used only internally at Toynbee. There was an educational interchange of students and distinguished leaders of the Old Vic Theatre like Tyrone Guthrie and John Burrell. John Burrell eventually went on to head the Toynbee Drama school, deepening the networks between arts, education and the wider East End community.

“THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE THEATRE WAS TO FOCUS ALL THE EDUCATION ACTIVITIES OF TOYNBEE HALL. IT WAS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT ALL THE ARTS COULD BE MADE TO COMBINE AT ANY TIME AND TO WHATEVER DEGREE WAS REQUIRED.”

TOYNBEE ANNUAL REPORT7

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The Orchestra Society at Toynbee Hall (date unknown)

��1939-1945: The Reawakening PeriodSeptember 1949, a year after the Theatre was built, Britain and France declared war on Germany, signifying the start of World War II.

While a cacophony of bombs and Blitz dispersed the streets of London, art, speech, drama, and ballet classes remained alive within Toynbee Hall. “Classes for those who needed them” was Toynbee’s motto during the war.8 Attended by thousands of students annually, the classes were conducted under the risk of blackouts, resulting in two years of obscurity between 1940 to 1942. The number of students regained momentum in 1943 (refer to Tab. 1).9

Adult ballet classes were held four evenings a week, and children’s classes were held on two evenings. During the worst weeks of the East End bombing, Theodore Wassilieff, known at Toynbee Hall as ‘Maestro’, a tall straight-backed old man with a dancer’s spring in his step, who had arrived in England in 1938 turned up unfailingly four times a week to take his ballet classes for war-workers; and along with Alice Lascelles, he founded a new School of Ballet which gave new life to the Toynbee Theatre.

Such perseverance was admirable – the performing arts at Toynbee Hall brought temporary escape and order to the fragmented lives of war-time East Enders. In war shelters, verses of Shakespeare were recited amidst fallen debris and flickering lights. The war was muted with theatre.

Notably, Dr. Mallon was amongst the many who recognised the therapeutic power of the arts. Edith Ramsay, a volunteer at Toynbee, vividly describes the incident on October 21 1940:

“THANKS TO DR. MALLON, THE WORK PEOPLE WHO HAD SPECIAL RESPONSIBILITIES THERE SLEPT IN A ROOM, ALL ON MATTRESSES ON THE FLOOR. ON THIS NIGHT WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS DUE TO SPEAK, AND WE ASSEMBLED TO HEAR HIM. DR MALLON HAD AN UNRIVALLED MEMORY FOR ENGLISH VERSE AND LOVED TO QUOTE AT LENGTH, AND WHAT JOY IT WAS TO HEAR HIM. ON THIS OCCASION HE HAD JUST FINISHED THE CLOSING PASSAGE OF SHAKESPEARE'S KING'S JOHN, WHEN THE FINAL WORDS

‘IF ENGLAND TO ITSELF DO REST, BUT TRUE’

WERE COMPLETELY DROWNED BY THE NOISE OF A NEARBY PLANE, AND IN SECONDS A BOMB HAD EXPLODED. THE

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Ballet Classes at Toynbee Hall (date unknown)

Table 1. Students and Number of Classes

Year Number of Students

Number of Classes

1939 - 1940 1173 74

1940 - 1941 506 32

1941 - 1942 834 40

1942 - 1943 1121 67

1943 - 1944 1414 80

1944 - 1945 1238 86

��CEILING OF OUR ROOM PARTLY COLLAPSED, ALL THE GLASS WAS BROKEN; MORTAR AND SHRAPNEL HIT US ALL AND THERE WAS NO ELECTRICITY. COVERED WITH DEBRIS, CUT BY GLASS, BRUISED BY FALLING MASONRY, OUR HAIR MATTED WITH DIRT, WE STOOD SILENT FOR A MINUTE. THEN SOMEONE CALLED

‘I'M ALL RIGHT; WHO IS HURT?’THE SILENCE WAS BROKEN AND NOBODY IN THE ROOM WAS SERIOUSLY HURT. BUT CURIOUSLY, AS WE WAITED, WE ALL KISSED EACH OTHER -- A STRANGE OCCURRENCE FOR A GROUP OF HIGHLY UNDEMONSTRATIVE PEOPLE”

EDITH RAMSAY LETTERS10

The arts at Toynbee was a “curative influence in the damaged social life” for many during the war.11 Czechoslovakian, Austrian and German refugees danced and sang in national costumes as they found solace in theatrical expressions. Mr. A. J. Duggan, a longstanding Toynbee Resident, began to organise drama festivals for companies of amateur players. Between the years 1942-1945, these festivals created an avenue for curation – a form of therapy through artistic expressions that attempted to order the fractured lives of East Enders. In many ways, the arts at Toynbee Hall broke the fourth-wall of its theatre during wartime London, penetrating public spaces with a syncopation of symphony and choreography, democratising theatre to the working class and refugees. The number of attendees to the Festivals rose from 1942, peaked in 1944, and lowered in numbers in 1945, as many came to watch Act III of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw performed by Mansford-Street Players, as well as performances by other amateur socialist-driven companies such as The Shelter Players, Union Players, and the Brady Players (refer to Tab. 2).12 An attendee, actor, and director to the Festivals, Sir Lewis Thomas Casson said that the drama festivals are the “most serious attempt which has been made

to encourage and assist amateur productions.”13 John Holgate, amid the disarray caused by the raids, started open air performances in West Ham. The Festivals inspired other amateur societies to survive the war - such as Stewart Headlam Shakespeare Association, the Civil Defence Posts - which in time produced not only actors, but also authors. It also touched the shelters in which groups of young people were stirred and found a corner for play reading. Toynbee has created Theatre that was symbiotic with reality; it mirrored it, therein subverting the choreography of violence with the choreography of performance.

The festivals lost money in early 1942 when it first started out and also in early 1943, only to begin generating revenue for Toynbee from late 1943 to late 1945. Eventually, the festivals ended in the winter of 1945 –– about the same time as the war did.14

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Drama Festival at Toynbee Hall (1940s)

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Table 2. Statistics for the Festivals

Year Dates Attendance Average Attendance

Number of Performances

Number of Performers

Average Number of

Performances per Performer

1942 3 Jan-14 Feb 1264 180 7 148 24

1942 17 Oct-28 Nov 1000 143 7 136 22

1943 23 Jan-27 Mar 1300 144 9 196 24

1943 16 Oct-4 Nov 2500 310 8 187 26

1944 15 Jan-11 Mar 3000 333 9 224 28

1944 21 Oct-2 Dec 2386 341 7 280 40

1945 27 Jan-17 Mar 2565 321 8 278 35

Table 3. Finances for the Festivals

Year DatesReceipts Expenditure Credit Deficit

£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.

1942 3 Jan-14 Feb 82 4 2 96 18 8 14 14 6

1942 17 Oct-28 Nov 72 10 7 68 6 1 4 4 6

1943 23 Jan-27 Mar 107 0 0 142 9 4 35 9 4

1943 16 Oct-4 Nov 147 17 0 115 4 10 32 12 2

1944 15 Jan-11 Mar 186 18 10 132 3 8 54 15 2

1944 21 Oct-2 Dec 172 19 2 107 11 7 65 7 7

1945 27 Jan-17 Mar 166 14 0 125 4 8 41 9 4

1945 27 Oct - 8 Dec 185 17 0 135 15 6 52 1 6

��The Baby Boom: The Blurring of Childish and Childlike in Toynbee's Children’s TheatreThroughout wartime London and after, Mallon fought to keep the theatre alive and thriving. He went to John Christie of Glyndebourne for financial support when Suria Magito suggested a Children's Theatre for Toynbee. In support, the Christies hoped that their generous financial assistance would enable the work of the Children's Theatre to be developed to a stage at which an organic relationship between it, the Ministry of Education, and the new Arts council could be established.

“NO ADULTS MAY ATTEND THE PERFORMANCE UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A CHILD”

TRADITIONS OF SOCIAL POLICY, 197315

Magito, who had conducted dramatic classes at Toynbee during the war, and who worked closely with St Denis, has made Toynbee Hall one of the pioneers of Children’s Theatre. Driven by an 'attendance criteria’ where "no adults may attend unless accompanied by a child”, the Children's Theatre at Toynbee ironically reversed London's middle class theatre, and with it - the childish and the childlike.

“Before the war, this country had not gone far in providing an organised theatre for children." wrote Mallon, inspired by experiments in Russia by professional actors specialised in children's theatre.16

As such, the inspirations for Children's Theatre at Toynbee was grounded in Russian social-realism, implicit within an ironic reversal of war propaganda. A precursor to many other experimental forms of theatre-making, the Children's Theatre was a socialist critique of the childish enterprise of warfare. Along with plays like Look Back in Anger by John Osbourne and Saved by Edward Bond, wherein

children were often the motif, many performances put up by Children's Theatre were experimental and had deeper undertones beneath the childlike facade.

Eighteen months after Toynbee's pioneering effort, the Young Vic started another children's theatre, and had begun to compete for grants. Indeed, the post-war era was an unstable period, both financially and politically. During the time when Rudolf Bing was Director of Production, George Bernard Shaw first offered to stage Androcles without a fee and his other plays at "a fee of half-a-crown a month to be paid annually to my account.” A Fabian and a vehement socialist, Shaw, also a friend of Mallon’s, made sure that he was not underselling Toynbee Hall. He wrote: “If the Children’s Theatre cannot afford a shilling in the £ on the gross receipts it must pay me a fee equal to half of its profits on each performance. Its effect will be that when you lose I get nothing.“17

In the beginning, the Children’s Theatre was gravely handicapped by lack of funds. And in response, Mallon turned to his - and Toynbee’s - old friend, Ellen Wilkinson, Minister of Education in the new Labour Government, who addressed a circular letter to the local education authorities commending the work of the Children’s Theatre and stipulating that expenditure on the attendance of children during

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Children’s Theatre at Toynbee Hall (1940s)

��school hours could be included or partial reimbursement under Ministry grant. Since then, youth education, arts and services have adopted a wider focus at Toynbee Hall - a focus that remains alive today.

A Spotlight on ‘Toynbeeians’Theodore Wassilieff & Alice Lascelles

During the worst weeks of the East End bombing, Theodore Wassilieff, known at Toynbee Hall as ‘Maestro’, had arrived in England in 1938 from Paris and turned up unfailingly four times a week to take his ballet classes for war-workers. A tall straight-backed old man with a “dancer’s spring in his step”, Theodore Wassilieff, a former member of the Imperial Russian Ballet and partner of Pavlova, played a huge part of shaping the experimental ballet and movement scene at Toynbee; he persisted through the Blitz, sharing his passion for interpretive dance, and therapy for the ‘City workers and local youth and girls who attended his classes.’18 He along, with his dance partner Alice Lascelles, founded a new School of Ballet that gave new life to the Toynbee Theatre.

Wassilieff retired in December 1951 due to ill-health. His health progressively worsened as neighbours round his studio home in St. Peter’s-square, Hammersmith, saw less and less of the tall figure in a conventional ballet-master’s black coat and large back hat. Then on Monday, 22 September 1952, a friend called the police when he noticed that lights in the “Maestro’s” studio had been burning all weekend.

Officers broke into his apartment to find Wassiliefff, aged 76, lying dead. He is believed to have collapsed on Saturday night.

His Funeral Service took place on Friday 3 October 10 AM at the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Phillip’s.19

He has never missed a class.

“I WAS FOR MANY YEARS HIS STUDENT AND SHALL ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM FOR HIS DEFINITION OF A REAL DIGNIFIED PERSON: ONE WHO COULD RETAIN MENTAL COMPOSURE AND A PHYSICAL POISE IN A CONDITION OF

NAKEDNESS.”

N.C. ROWE’S ‘DIGNITY UNADORNED’20

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Alice Lascelles (left) Theodore Wassilieff (right)

��1950-1959: The Toynbee TragedyUnlike Mallon who consistently fought for the arts by receiving grants from the Arts Council and by approaching his well-connected similar minded network of artists, aristocrats, and politicians, the new warden, Dr. A. E. Morgan, was presented with an entirely different set of struggles after the war: financial depression and bomb destructions.

A bomb completely damaged the warden lodge and the library, tearing down the facade of Toynbee Hall. While the Toynbee Theatre and the Drama School survived under John Brunell, much of the academic and residential infrastructure was damaged after the war. As such, in 1959, Dr. A. E. Morgan issued a statement concerning a new venture to meet the increasing need for the training of social workers.21 As an essential part of its organisation, Toynbee Hall planned to develop a centre composed of library plans as well as study and discussion spaces where social workers could come for training and contribute to field work. At a time of a nationwide economic recession, the decision between preserving the arts or preserving academic pursuits was a difficult one for Morgan. In Morgan’s statement, the London County Council (LCC) would take over the educational work done by the Council of Toynbee Hall. In saying so, funding to Toynbee Theatre had to be slashed, resulting in the closure of the recreational block and theatre.

The news came as a real shock for students. Drama students and Toynbee Players were at risk of being evicted; for the first time, education and the arts were put in a position of risk at Toynbee Hall. In 1959, Morgan, faced with an undoubtedly difficult decision, ultimately decided to close Toynbee Theatre indefinitely. It was, as Toynbeeians called it –– a ‘Toynbee Tragedy’ for the performing arts.

1959-1964: The Five Nomadic Years for Toynbee TheatreWhen the statement by Morgan was made, rumours percolated from time to time about the theatre – that it was to be converted into a warehouse, to be used as a TV studio, or as a space for Arnold Wesker’s Theatre 42 project. The future was uncertain for Toynbee Players and the drama students.

One of the most prominent of the activities at Toynbee was the Drama School. The school offered two-year courses under professional tutors, and it was from here that the Toynbee Players re-stocked the company. All of this was made available for contest and negotiation in the year 1959.

For five years, the theatre stood empty, gathering dust hanging over the damp creeping in to spoil the decor and eating into electrical installations. Toynbee Players and the drama students were made nomads in their own space; they functioned in various evening school halls, giving performances at diverse theatres in and around the East End. Drama student, Denise O'Shea of the Toynbee Players, who now rehearse at the Martin Frobisher School, Ben Johnson Road, Stepney, says: "We feel we don’t

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Experimental Movement at Toynbee Hall (1940s-50s)

��belong here, and in the future we can't call ourselves the Toynbee Hall Players if there isn't any Toynbee Hall. It's a big place, and there ought to be room enough for the social workers and the students. In any case, a lot of social work can be done from a hostel.”22

‘Toynbee’ as a identity and as a space was made precarious.

But for five years, as Head of the Drama School and figurehead of the Players, Bertha Myers refused to accept the closure of the theatre as final, and fought and pleaded with all kinds of authorities - particularly with the L.C.C. - for something to be done. A Southern Rhodesian born actress and producer who founded one of the first schools of speech and drama in Salisbury, Myers came to London in 1946, joined the Old Vic, and became assistant to George Devine. In 1955, she came to Toynbee Drama School doing the two-year Acting Course plus an additional year in the Advanced Course. She eventually joined the Players as acting member. A ‘Toynbeeian’ herself and alumnus of the Drama School, secretary to Toynbee Players, Brenda Bourbon reported on Bertha Myers’ fight to preserve Toynbee Theatre, acknowledging the strong alumni network amongst ‘Toynbeeians’:

"IN FACT, THERE ARE SO MANY TOYNBEEIANS FLITTING AROUND THE PROFESSION AND, IN PARTICULAR, TV THAT IT'S BECOMING INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO WATCH TV WITHOUT SEEING A FAMILIAR FACE. THE GREAT THING ABOUT THESE EX-TOYNBEEIANS IS THAT THEY STILL REGARD TOYNBEE AS "ALMA MATER”

BY SECRETARY OF TOYNBEE PLAYERS, BRENDA BOURBON23

She continued, in pride, reflecting on Toynbee’s past glory during its Children Theatre days:

”LOOKING BACK TO BEFORE THE THEATRE CLOSED, I REMEMBER THE TOYNBEE PLAYERS GIVING SPECIAL AFTERNOON PERFORMANCES OF CHILDREN'S PLAYS IN DECEMBER TO THE CHILDREN OF EMPLOYEES FROM A LARGE TOBACCO MANUFACTURING COMPANY IN COMMERCIAL STREET!”

BY SECRETARY OF TOYNBEE PLAYERS,BRENDA BOURBON24

After five years of slow but persistent negotiations from Toynbeeians and Bertha Myers, in 1964, London County Council purchased the building and renovated the theatre to be used as the drama centre for the London Education Service. The grand opening was scheduled for April 1964 with the opening production of “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”, an Oscar Wilde short story adapted for the stage by Constance Cox, pushed for, of course, by Bertha Myers. Almost all performances shown at Toynbee Hall after its grand opening revolved around a Whitehall humour in which its facade was seemingly

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��casual but laden with disturbing undertones.

“The theatre is already fully booked until mid-way through July,” says the new manager of the Toynbee

Theatre actor and producer Donald Walker, bringing an indefinite end to the Five Nomadic Years. In 1964, Toynbeeians have returned Home, at last.

A Spotlight on ‘Toynbeeians’Alfred C. Lynch

Toynbee Players and the Drama School have been the stepping-off stone for many professionals today. They include people such as Le Montague, Frank Dunlop (director of Nottingham Rep.), Steve Lewis (playwright of ‘Sparrows Can’t Sing’), and –– Alfred Lynch.25

Born the son of a plumber in Whitechapel, in the heart of London’s East End, Alfred Lynch left his small, Roman Catholic school at 14, worked in a draughtsman’s office, completed national service, and then - having always wanted to be in theatre - attended evening classes at Toynbee Hall whilst working in a factory. There, during an evening class, ‘Alfie’ met James Clifford, another cockney drama student; they fell in love, and were together for nearly 50 years.

One of the pioneering breed of unashamed working-class actors who emerged at the Royal Court theatre in the 1950s and 1960s, Alfie had a quality of down-to-earth truth and realism in his acting. After spending two years at the Toynbee Drama school and with Toynbee Players, Alfie transferred to the Royal Court in a production of Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup with Barley. He had great vitality, an infectious lightheartedness, an independent mind and strong well-informed opinions about current affairs and the arts. “He would have made a marvellous talk show host,” says Anthony Page who first got to know him when he was co-directing Live Like Pigs with George Devine.

While his immense repertoire of stage and screen performances took him to the National, the Young Vic, and to the West End, Alfie would always return to small repertory theatres to play both classics and modern plays. In 1972, Alfie and his partner Jimmy moved from London to Brighton, where, until Jimmy’s death in 2002, he put aside his career to look after him. Alfred Cornelius Lynch was born January 26 1931 and died, aged 72, of cancer December 16 2003.

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��1970s and beyond:Toynbee Theatre to Curtain Theatre to Arts AdminWhen Toynbee Theatre re-opened in 1964, due to the change of administration from the Council of Toynbee Hall to the London City Council, it was renamed as the ‘Curtain Theatre’ under a 20 year lease.26 Slowly, ’Toynbeeians’ began to feel less connected to Toynbee Hall. Yet, from 1964 to 1976, its foundation of socialist and satirical plays remained alive at Curtain Theatre as seen in plays like How the Other Half Love (a satire of How the Other Half Lives, a publication of photojournalism of poverty by Jacob Riis), The Devil’s Disciple, Shaw’s Pygmalion, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.27 Along with its fringe theatre counterparts at the Royal Court and the Stratford Royal Theatre East, Curtain Theatre staged plays that reversed the mindset of the London urban middle-class with ones that aimed to challenge and redefine what it meant to be of the working class. In many ways, Curtain Theatre artistically echoed Toynbee Hall’s vision "for a future without poverty”.

In 1984, under Margaret Tatcher's government, Curtain Theatre was closed. Little is known about the accurate reason for its closure but financial and static membership seemed most probable. In 1971, membership to the Art club was static, reducing the number of plays staged annually from 4 to about 1. The last recorded play under Curtain Theatre was Pygmalion in 1976.

Artsadmin later leased Toynbee Theatre, and renamed it as ‘Toynbee Studios’. Toynbee's historically loaded drawing room was also leased to Artsadmin and turned into the Arts Bar & Cafe. Artsadmin has remained faithful in preserving Toynbee Theatre's experimental ‘shopwindow’ history; Toynbee Studios is now used as a “unique centre for the development and presentation of new work.“28

In 2013, Geraldine Pilgrim presented a new site-specific promenade performance TOYNBEE at Toynbee Hall during Spitalfields Winter Festival in December, an intentional allusion to the Festivals during the war.29 Within a landscape of live music, image and performance, unexpected fragments of the past contained within its walls waited to be revealed. Traces of lives were glimpsed out of windows, at the end of corridors, and at the turn of a stair, whilst footsteps echoed to the sound of different voices of the contemporary East End.

Commissioned by Artsadmin in 2013 and produced in partnership with Spitalfields Music and Toynbee Hall, TOYNBEE was the theatrical punctuation of Toynbee's history, retelling a foreign past and its equally foreign future over a medium that is symbiotic with its present.

History to Present. ’Toynbee Theatre’ to ‘Curtain Theatre’ to ‘TOYNBEE’. Toynbee’s performing arts legacy is preserved on the same vein, manifested over different names.

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Scanned by CamScanner

‘Curtain Theatre’ Brochure (1960s)

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Not only is the past a foreign country . . . but so is the future. To be or not – It’s all at Toynbee.

TOYNBEE by Geraldine Pilgrim. Image credits to Arts Admin (2013)

��Notes1. Briggs, Asa, and Anne Macartney. Toynbee Hall. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1984. Print, p. 133. 2. Barnett, Henrietta. Canon Barnett, His Life, Work, And Friends, London: John Murray, 1921. Print. p. 326 3. Barnett, Henrietta. Canon Barnett, His Life, Work, And Friends, London: John Murray, 1921. Print. p. 336 4. Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 21 (Toynbee Archives) 5. ibid 6. For more information about the class offered at Toynbee Hall during its founding years, refer to 1892 Toynbee Records p.

10 & 11, and Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 21-25 (Toynbee Archives) 7. Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 21 (Toynbee Archives) 8. Toynbee Report for 1943 (Mallon Papers, Toynbee Hall Collection, London Met. Archives) 9. Table 1 is found in Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 15 (Toynbee Archives) 10. Account by Edith Ramsay (Mallon Papers, Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 11. Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 22 (Toynbee Archives) 12. Table 2 is found in Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 23 (Toynbee Archives) 13. Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 22 (Toynbee Archives) 14. Table 3 is found in Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 23 (Toynbee Archives) 15. Traditions of Social Policy, 1973. See also C.V. Butler Barnett House 1914 to 1964. A Record of its Friends (Private

circulation, n.d.) 16. Toynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946, p. 24 (Toynbee Archives) 17. Letter of Sir Robert Waley Cohen to Mallon, 3 October 1946 (Mallon Papers, Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 18. Press cutting 'The Maestro of Ballet Dies Alone’ September 23 1952 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 19. Funeral leaflet, October 1952 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 20. Press cutting ‘Dignity Unadorned’ undated (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 21. Dr. A. E. Morgan Council Statement 1959 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives). See also Press cutting ‘New

Shock for evening class students at Toynbee Hall’ East London Advertiser, Friday, September 4 1959 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives)

22. Press cutting ‘New Shock for evening class students at Toynbee Hall’ East London Advertiser, Friday, September 4 1959 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives)

23. ‘The Toynbee Players’, Smoke Signals, April 1965 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 24. ibid 25. Information about the life-story of Alfred Cornelius Lynch is found in Press cutting, Obituaries, Alfred Lynch, The

Guardian, 9 January 2003. 26. The years are debated - between 20 and 21. Toynbee Players Play Sheet (Toynbee Collection, London Met Archives) 27. Toynbee Players Play Sheet (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) 28. http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/toynbee-studios 29. http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/toynbee

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��Background ReadingsBarnett, Henrietta. Canon Barnett, His Life, Work, And Friends. London: John Murray, 1921. Print.

Briggs, Asa, and Anne Macartney. Toynbee Hall. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1984. Print.

Butler, C. Violet. Barnett House, 1914 To 1964. [Oxford?: s.n., 1964. Print.

Meacham, Standish. Toynbee Hall And Social Reform, 1880-1914. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Print.

Pimlott, J. A. R. Toynbee Hall, Fifty Years Of Social Progress, 1884-1934. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1935. Print.

Primary SourcesToynbee Hall Annual Report 1938-1946 (Toynbee Archives) 1892 Toynbee Records (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Account by Edith Ramsay (Mallon Papers, Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Traditions of Social Policy, 1973 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Letter of Sir Robert Waley Cohen to Mallon, 3 October 1946 (Mallon Papers, Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Dr. A. E. Morgan Council Statement 1959 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives Funeral leaflet, October 1952 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Press cutting 'The Maestro of Ballet Dies Alone’ September 23 1952 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Press cutting ‘The Toynbee Players’, Smoke Signals, April 1965 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Press cutting ‘Obituaries, Alfred Lynch’, The Guardian, 9 January 2003. Press cutting ‘Dignity Unadorned’, undated (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives) Press cutting ‘New Shock for evening class students at Toynbee Hall’ East London Advertiser, Friday, September 4 1959 (Toynbee Collection, London Met. Archives)

PhotographsAll photographs are credits to the Toynbee Archive unless specified otherwise.

WebsitesArtsadmin,. 'Toynbee Studios'. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Aug. 2015. http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/toynbee Artsadmin,. 'TOYNBEE'. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Aug. 2015. http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/toynbee

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David Chia Toynbee Hall Intern Jun-Aug 2015 junweng.chia@yale-nus.edu.sg

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