Programme from St Pancras People’s Theatre

Date: 1937

Edith Neville was passionate about theatre. In the 1930s, she held the license for the St Pancras People’s Theatre, which was in Charrington Hall on Crowndale Road. Phyllis Kindersley was the Producer and Manager. At a site where The St Pancras House Improvement Society had run a nursery, a theatre was developed. Its offering was repertory plays, as well as acting classes for adults and children. For Edith Neville, theatre was improving for people’s moral sense and cultivated an attunement to beauty. This led to the expression of some rather critical views on contemporary Jazz, which she regarded as tasteless. Through what she deemed refined Art and Literature, nations came to appreciate other nations and move away from the competition of war to the establishment of a Kingdom of God on earth. 

By Esther Leslie