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London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, the rooms above pubs where things start, and the booth on Leicester Square that sells off what the West End has not. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.
What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance
A Gothic Methodist church on Archway Road, and the country's principal stage for contemporary circus.
PlayhousesWorth it for the building
W. H. Boney of Highgate built it as a Wesleyan Methodist church in 1905, on the corner where Jacksons Lane meets Archway Road: early Gothic, 650 worshippers in the church and another 400 in the schoolroom. It closed in 1975 and became an arts centre instead, which is how a north London suburb ended up with a very large hall and no idea what to do with it.
What it did was circus. Sideshow Magazine's survey of the field named it the leading presenter and supporter of contemporary circus in Britain, and that is still the programme - acrobatics, aerial work and physical theatre made by companies who need height and a floor that can take a fall, which a Victorian church has and a studio theatre does not.
There are six spaces, the main theatre holding 170, and one of the largest dance and rehearsal rooms in the country. Five million pounds of Arts Council and Haringey money went into the building in 2022 and produced, among other things, two rooms specifically for making circus in.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.