About the Building
Originally called the ‘Lilla Huset’ (Swedish for ‘purple house’), 191 Talgarth Road was designed by celebrated Swedish-based architects Ralph Erskine and Lennart Bergström, and was built alongside our iconic sister venue The Ark in the early 90s.
The building formerly operated as an administrative and archive space for Hammersmith & Fulham Council and then it was let as offices. By the time SCRUM Theatre moved in, the building had been empty for years.
"The job of buildings is to improve human relations: architecture must ease them, not make them worse."
— Ralph Erskine
Ralph Erskine is best known in the UK for his large-scale social housing projects, such as Newcastle’s Byker Wall.
Since February 2024, on the tightest of budgets and with much help, we’ve been restoring the building and turning it into a community arts centre so artists from underserved backgrounds have a space to create and train in. Something of which we hope Ralph Erskine would have approved.
Our Studio Heroes
Our rehearsal studios Federico, Ira and Sarah are named in honour of people we consider heroes of theatre history: Federico García Lorca, Ira Aldridge and Sarah Bernhardt. Each studio features a mural of the hero its named after, painted by William Dawkins. You can read about their lives in the dropdown menus below.
Federico García Lorca
Iconoclast poet, playwright & director
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(1898-1936)
Federico García Lorca saved politics not for his poetry but for his plays. And where he produced these plays mattered almost as much as what he put in them. In 1931, Lorca was appointed director of a government-sponsored student touring theatre company, La Barraca. His mission: ‘to get ordinary working people into the theatre.’ In a van with a portable theatre, the company travelled dusty country roads to spectators all over rural Spain, many of whom had never before attended a dramatic performance. Lorca penned his greatest plays during this time, including Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936).
Although Lorca could never address his homosexuality directly in his plays, he wrote tragic heroines whose struggles with marginalization, surveillance, tyranny, and frustrated love reflected the experiences of women and queer people alike within conservative Spanish society.
Lorca was murdered by fascist forces one month into the Spanish Civil War. He is remembered as one of Spain’s greatest writers and remains a potent symbol of the 140,000 people who were disappeared during and after the Civil War, many of them also LGBTQIA+ and courageous critics of authoritarianism.
Ira Aldridge
Trailblazing actor, playwright & activist
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(1807-1867)
The African Grove Theatre (1821-23) was a Black-founded theatre company operating in downtown Manhattan. It was there that Ira Aldridge learnt both his craft, and that if he wanted to achieve the level of success he yearned for, he would have to leave the pre-Civil War United States. So Aldridge worked his passage as a steward on a ship sailing to Britain, where slavery had been abolished since 1807.
In 1833, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, Aldridge became the first Black man to play Othello at a first-rate London theatre. He also excelled playing Macbeth, King Lear, Shylock, Titus Andronicus, and Richard III, and is credited with introducing a more naturalistic acting style to Europe. He was celebrated for addressing audiences at the end of his performances with powerful speeches on the abolition of slavery.
When the British press orchestrated an attack on him for marrying Margaret Gill, a white woman, Aldridge left Britain to tour Continental Europe and Russia. There he performed to packed houses and was showered with accolades including the Gold Medal for Arts and Sciences, conferred on him by the King of Prussia, the title of Chevalier Aldridge, Knight of Saxony, as well as the greatest reviews of his career.
When he died aged 60 whilst on tour in the Polish city of Łódź, he was given a state funeral.
Sarah Bernhardt
‘The greatest actress in the world’
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(1844-1923)
One night, at the climax of a production of La Tosca, the woman celebrated as ‘the greatest actress in the world’ threw herself from the parapet of Sant’Angelo prison, but there was no mattress beneath to break her fall. Sarah Bernhardt’s right knee never recovered. For the next nine years Bernhardt lived and worked with chronic pain until, by 1915, it became so agonizing that she resolved to have the leg amputated. Reassuring admirers that it wouldn’t halt her career, she insisted, ‘In case of necessity, I shall have myself strapped to the furniture.’ And she did.
Dissatisfied with the prosthetic technology of the time, Bernhardt devised several alternatives, most notably a sumptuous white sedan chair which stagehands would use to carry her on and off the stage. Each theatrical production, film, and tour she would then embark on, including a tour of the front line to entertain the French troops, placed Bernhardt’s access requirements and autonomy at its centre.
Renovations
The SCRUM team were handed the keys to 191 Talgarth Road in February 2024 and quickly got to work transforming the building into a colourful, welcoming community arts hub.
But how many communities does it take to building a community arts hub? Many!
The transformation of 191 Talgarth Road has only been made possible thanks to the help of the friends, volunteers and charitable partners who have generously donated us their time, skills and furniture.
We particularly want to thank: Hammond & Associates; the team at The Ark; Theatre Deli; Nick Hern Books; Crown Workspace; Hammersmith BID; Yes Colours; the amazing Murugiah for donating a piece of his artwork; Esta Charkham for her library contributions; every volunteer who came to SCRUM through the brilliant Works 4 U and Today Tix; mural painters Martyna Bielecka and William Dawkins; our studio crew for learning exceptionally quickly on the job; the creatives who pitched in for our work exchange Paint Days; our friends and families who went above and beyond painting, driving, hauling, storing, baking, and spreading the word about what we’ve been doing.
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Don’t forget to claim your studio time! Contact studios@scrumtheatre.co.uk & comms@scrumtheatre.co.uk to book into the space.
Before/After
Studio Sarah, Feb. 2024
Studio Sarah, Jul. 2024, featuring Adrian Lester leading a masterclass.
The Scrummage, Feb. 2024
The Scrummage, Aug. 2024. More information about our co-working spaces here.
Location
The studios are a short distance from other cultural institutions including LAMDA, Eventim Apollo and the Lyric Hammersmith.
We are an 8-minute walk from Hammersmith and Barons Court tube stations.
Walk-through and step-free videos of the space coming soon.