Among Faceless Offices, a Theater Taking Risks

Regent’s Place, a business quarter in the Euston district of central London, isn’t a likely location for a theater. Many of the buildings there are the offices of global corporations. The glass-fronted New Diorama could easily be mistaken for one.

Since it opened in 2010, the New Diorama, an 80-seat studio theater, has gained a reputation as an incubator of new talent. It presents an innovative program of work by emerging theater companies and offers the artists who work there a level of creative support that’s rare for a venue of its size, with free rehearsal space, interest-free loans and help finding funding from other sources.

The theater has nurtured the careers of many small troupes, and, in some cases, its support has been transformative. This season, two shows that originated at the New Diorama are playing on the West End: “Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical by the collective SplitLip, and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a piece exploring Black masculinity and mental health, created by Ryan Calais Cameron. That show, which premiered in 2021, went from the New Diorama to a run at the Royal Court Theater, before a commercial producer snapped it up.

David Byrne, the New Diorama’s artistic director, said in an interview that it was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers.”

Byrne added that he always tells artists who work at the New Diorama: “We need you to ask for things that you need. And we will try to provide them.”

Cameron, whose show is running at the Apollo Theater through May 7, first came to the New Diorama’s attention in 2018, when he and his company, Nouveau Riche, won the theater’s Edinburgh Untapped Award. That prize gave the young director the funding to take an earlier show, “Queens of Sheba,” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In an interview, Cameron recalled Byrne telling him that the New Diorama’s support didn’t end with the award: It was the start of a relationship. “He really seemed like he cared about the longevity of myself and the company,” Cameron said.

Then, in 2021, when many British theaters were rebounding from pandemic-related lockdowns with low-risk solo shows, Cameron went to Byrne with his proposal for “For Black Boys,” a dance-theater piece for six performers. Cameron said the theater agreed to program the show after a meeting that lasted just eight minutes.

“New Diorama was the only venue in London willing to take that kind of risk on an artist still relatively new to the mainstream,” Cameron said.

Zoe Roberts, a SplitLip member whose previous company, Kill the Beast, also received support from the New Diorama, described the theater’s decision to work with her troupe as “a leap of faith,” because SplitLip had never produced a musical before. (“Operation Mincemeat” is at the Fortune Theater through July 8.)

“They held our hands through the entire thing,” Roberts said in an interview. “They’re in their office running the theater, while also helping to produce our show, and even running around with a drill fixing bits of our set, because we didn’t have someone to do that,” she said.

One of the key things the New Diorama provides the artists it works with is financial assistance — and not just while they’re developing a show for its stage. In 2016, the theater started offering interest-free loans for companies who had already worked there, to offset the costs of venue hire or taking work to the Edinburgh Fringe. Roberts likened the New Diorama to “the kindest bank in the world.”

Its annual budget is around $1.5 million: It receives a small subsidy from the British government, and raises the rest through philanthropy, corporate sponsorship and ticket sales. Byrne makes the New Diorama’s income go further by negotiating deals with local businesses, including hotels to host visiting troupes from outside London and a local restaurant that delivers free post-show pizzas.

One of the biggest barriers that small theater companies face, Byrne said, is the cost of rehearsal space, which in London can be up to $60 an hour. So in 2017 the New Diorama made a deal with British Land, the property developer that owns the land that the theater stands on, to take over part of a nearby vacant building. Companies working with the New Diorama could use it as a free rehearsal space.

That program was a test run for N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary artist development complex in an empty central London office space that opened in 2021 and closed last year. N.D.T. Broadgate was also a collaboration with British Land, which again gave over the vacant real estate at no charge. Theater companies from across Britain could apply to use the space free, with the spots filled via lottery.

N.D.T. Broadgate featured 16 rehearsal spaces, as well as a design studio. According to an independent report on the project commissioned by British Land and the theater, 724 small theater companies used the resources, creating 250 new shows. Cameron was one of the artists who benefited, creating a studio for Black artists within the space. “It was a kind of utopia,” he said.

Byrne said that many British theater companies were struggling to get back on their feet after enforced closures during the pandemic, and that the rising cost of living had only amplified their problems. “Everyone we talked to was exhausted,” he said. Last year, he and the New Diorama’s executive director, Will Young, decided to close the theater for a season and focus on rejuvenation instead. “We wanted to send a signal that it’s all right not to continue growing,” Byrne said.

Even though it was closed, the New Diorama continued paying artists to develop new work. It put out an open call for ensembles around Britain and received over 500 responses, Young said.

The theater reopened earlier this year with “After the Act,” a musical developed during this period by the multimedia performance company Breach Theater, about the legacy of Section 28, a government policy that banned the promotion of homosexuality in British schools in the 1980s and 90s. According to the New Diorama, “After the Act” is its best-selling show to date.

Not being as reliant on public funds as some organizations “means we can take really calculated swings that often pay off,” Byrne said.

“It’s about pushing that creative ambition as much as possible,” he added. The New Diorama is about encouraging artists to run with their ideas, to take risks and know that “we’ve got you,” Byrne said. “You have a safety net.”