Park Theatre turns ten: "Opening a theatre was not going to be an easy feat"

As Finsbury Park’s theatre celebrates its tenth birthday, Miriam Balanescu meets co-founder and artistic director Jez Bond

In 2010, Jez Bond and his wife Melli discovered an office block in Finsbury Park. It was empty and unassuming, but, yearning for a space to convert into a new arts venue, the couple only saw its potential. They snapped it up — and embarked on a relatively budget £2.6million conversion.

“It was already split level, it was a bit of a Tardis, it had decent street frontage,” said Jez. “Most importantly, we were right next to the tube.”

Jez, a theatre director, and Melli, an actor, had long been looking for a space they could transform into a theatre of their own. They partnered with Audiences London to find out which locations would be the best fit. “Their data showed that in Finsbury Park and the surrounding areas was the highest percentage of London-based theatre goers into the West End,” explained Jez. “There was an opportunity to actually have an already theatre-savvy audience who we could tap into but at the same time being in the back garden of one of the largest council estates in London at a time where government cuts year-on-year meant that young people weren’t given those opportunities that I was given. [That] meant that we could go in and be a positive change for the community.”

And so — Park Theatre was born. Putting down roots was a top priority for Jez, whose globe-trotting theatre work had prevented him being able to pin down a theatre community. “I slightly missed having bricks and mortar, having a base, because the audiences that I would see in Switzerland or Austria or Hong Kong were all completely different audiences,” Jez said. “I like the idea that you can have a base and you can nurture an audience, see the same faces coming in day in and day out, work with them to curate shows, give them a couple of things they like and expect and then maybe something a little bit unexpected.”

And fostering that community has also been crucial to the theatre’s survival. Before its first season, Jez and Melli made sure to get Park Theatre quite literally on the map, taking theatre-lovers, celebrities and local communities on “hard-hat tours”. “I knew opening a theatre was not going to be an easy feat, and opening a theatre at that time when people were saying, ‘oh god, you’re opening in a recession’,” explained Jez. “I wanted to make sure that by the time we opened there was already a buzz. We would take people around, giving them steel toe-cap shoes and hard hats. By the time we opened three years later, we had shown around over 2,000 people.”

Ahead of its opening in 2013, the theatre had a star-studded show of support — since then, the likes of Miriam Margolyes, Ian McKellen and Dame Maureen Lipman have taken to its stage. This month, Park Theatre celebrates its tenth birthday – in this time ushering in seven Olivier nominations and seeing seven shows transferred to the West End.

However, the experience hasn’t been all plain-sailing. “The biggest hurdle is always consistent: it’s funding,” stated Jez. “The biggest moment of that, of course, was during the pandemic, where we were facing liquidation. Were we not blessed by having such incredible local support, we may have not survived the pandemic.”

The theatre prides itself on its in-house productions, something they hope to do more of. The celebrityscattered Whodunnit series has been a particular highlight, Jez said: “That has brought in such an inspirational and eclectic range of people from the creative industries, from people like Jim Broadbent and Emma Thompson and Gillian Anderson, to people you might think are a bit more left field: Ronan Keating, Johnny Vegas, Lee Mack and David Mitchell. It’s just been a wonderful experience to have so many people who love Park Theatre and understand who we are wanting to come and support us and do a turn.”

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