Sadler's Wells Theatre facts for kids
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Sadler's Wells, 2015
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| Address | Rosebery Avenue London, EC1 England |
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| Coordinates | 51°31′46″N 0°06′22″W / 51.529444°N 0.106111°W |
| Owner | Sadlers Wells Trust |
| Designation | Grade II listed |
| Type | Dance, production and receiving house |
| Capacity | 1,500 on three levels 200 Lilian Baylis Studio |
| Opened | (Catalan) 1683 |
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a famous place in London, England. It is known for its amazing dance shows. This theatre is located in Islington, on Rosebery Avenue. The building you see today is actually the sixth theatre to stand on this spot!
Sadler's Wells started as a fun park in the late 1600s. It became a theatre building around the 1680s. Back then, it wasn't allowed to show regular plays. So, it became famous for dancing, animal acts, and even big shows with sea battles in a huge water tank on stage!
In the mid-1800s, the rules changed. The theatre could finally put on plays. A man named Samuel Phelps made it famous for showing plays by Shakespeare from 1844 to 1862. After that, the theatre had good and bad times. It even became empty and run-down for a while.
In 1926, a kind person named Lilian Baylis bought and rebuilt the theatre. She also owned another theatre called the Old Vic. Sadler's Wells became home to dance, drama, and opera groups. These groups later grew into the famous Royal Ballet, the National Theatre, and English National Opera.
Many famous groups performed here over the years. The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company performed Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The English Opera Group, started by Benjamin Britten, also had its London home here. Dance groups like Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham also visited.
The theatre building we see now opened in 1998. It has two main stages: a large one with 1,500 seats and a smaller one called the Lilian Baylis Studio. It also has many rehearsal rooms. Today, Sadler's Wells is mostly known for dance. It hosts visiting dance companies and also creates its own new dance shows. Sadler's Wells also has another location at the Peacock Theatre in the West End.
Contents
History of Sadler's Wells Theatre
The First Theatre: 1683–1765
The exact story of how Sadler's Wells began is a bit unclear. Many people say it was started by a man named Dick Sadler. Others call him Thomas or Edward. It's also not certain if it opened in 1683, 1684, or 1685. Some stories say Sadler had a "Musick-House" even before 1683.
A special well with mineral water was found on Sadler's land in Islington. A doctor said the water was good for health. Sadler found two more wells nearby. Drinking special waters was popular back then, like at spas in Bath. So, Sadler started selling the water from his wells.
People came to his Musick-House to drink the water. Many doctors in London told their patients to go there. By 1685, hundreds of people visited every morning for the water. Sadler also made beautiful gardens and hired performers. There were tumblers, rope-dancers, and musicians. Sadler worked with a violinist named Francis Forcer, who was a dance teacher and composer.
The spa's popularity didn't last long. By 1691, it was no longer a trendy place. Sadler sold two wells, and the main one dried up. His shows became the main reason people visited. It's thought that Sadler either died or retired by 1697. Forcer then partnered with James Miles. The wooden building was renamed "Miles's Musick-House." They had singers, jugglers, wrestlers, and even a "singing duck"!
In the early 1700s, the spa's reputation got worse. By 1736, the theatre was seen as a place for ordinary people, not fashionable ones. One writer in 1699 described the audience as "Butchers and bailiffs, and such sort of fellows." In 1711, it was called a "nursery of debauchery" with "disorderly" people. In 1712, a man was sentenced to death for killing someone at Sadler's Wells.
Miles died in 1724. Forcer's son took over and tried to make the theatre better. He succeeded in getting rid of many "vagabonds." But after he died in 1743, John Warren took over, and things got bad again. The authorities even closed the place.
Then, Thomas Rosoman and Peter Hough took over. They reopened Sadler's Wells in April 1746. This started 20 years of good times for the old wooden theatre. Rosoman rebuilt much of the wooden building in 1748–49.
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Rosoman hired a group of actors. The old Musick-House became a real theatre. Rosoman brought in "burlettas," a new type of musical play in England. Back then, only two special theatres were allowed to show plays without music. Sadler's Wells got around this rule by having actors speak with music playing in the background. This made it seem like a musical show.
In 1763, Rosoman hired dancers from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. This was good for both theatres. Sadler's Wells was open from late spring to early autumn, and the other theatres were open the rest of the year. This helped Sadler's Wells become more famous. The new Ballet Master was Giuseppe Grimaldi. His son, Joseph, later became a huge star at Sadler's Wells. In 1764, Rosoman announced that the theatre would be torn down and rebuilt in a "most elegant manner."
The Second Theatre: 1765–1802
Rosoman was a builder. He replaced the wooden theatre with a brick building. The new theatre was finished in just seven weeks and cost £4,225. It opened in April 1765. People liked the new building. A London newspaper said it was "considerably enlarged" and had "splendor and magnificence."
In 1771, Rosoman retired. He sold his share to Thomas King, a friend of the famous actor David Garrick. King continued to offer traditional shows like tumblers, singers, and acrobats. He also focused on pantomimes, making the theatre a rival to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. His shows included Vineyard Revels and The Whim-Wham. In 1781, Joseph Grimaldi, who was only two years old, made his first stage appearance dancing with his sister.
By the 1790s, the theatre needed repairs. The owners decided to rebuild the inside completely. They wanted the building to be strong for the next 50 years.
The Third Theatre: 1802–1879
Sadler's Wells reopened in 1802 with a completely rebuilt inside. In 1804, it got a new and exciting feature: the Aqua-show! A huge water tank was built under the stage for water shows. Another tank above the stage created waterfall effects. Water for these tanks came from the New River next to the theatre.
For 30 years, Sadler's Wells became famous for "nautical dramas" – plays about the sea. The water effects made them very realistic. Joseph Grimaldi, known as "the unchallenged king of clowns," continued to be the main clown until 1820.
In 1843, a law changed, allowing all theatres to perform plays without music. The next year, serious drama came to Sadler's Wells. From 1844 to 1862, the actor Samuel Phelps managed the theatre and was its star. He wanted to bring Shakespeare's plays to everyone. Sadler's Wells mostly had a local, working-class audience from Islington. The theatre was big (2,500 seats) and had low rent, which was good for business.
Phelps believed the theatre should show "the works of our great dramatic poets." He put on more than 1,600 performances of 31 Shakespeare plays. He also showed many other plays from different time periods. Famous actors like Laura Addison and Isabella Glyn were part of his company. Phelps himself played roles from Hamlet to Falstaff. His shows were very detailed and true to the original plays. People from outside Islington, including writers like Charles Dickens, started coming to the theatre.
After Phelps left in 1862, the theatre showed many different types of shows. But they didn't do very well. Many managers tried to make the theatre successful, but it closed in 1874. There were even plans to turn it into public baths. The building was in bad shape. It was used for roller-skating, lectures, boxing, and wrestling. In 1878, Sidney Bateman, who ran the Lyceum Theatre, bought the lease for Sadler's Wells.
The Fourth Theatre: 1879–1915
Sidney Bateman hired C. J. Phipps to design a new inside for the theatre. It reopened in October 1879. Phipps changed the seating areas to hold more people. A theatre newspaper called The Era said Sadler's Wells was now "one of the largest and most conveniently-constructed London Theatres." Islington was no longer a small village but part of London, and it was easy to get to the theatre by bus or tram.
Bateman hoped to make the theatre famous for classic plays again, like in Phelps's time. But she died in 1881. There were attempts to turn the theatre into a music hall, but the authorities said no.
The only big change to Phipps's building was a new entrance porch added by architect Bertie Crewe in 1894. In the early 1900s, the theatre also showed movies on Sundays. During the week, it had live shows, often "cowboy melodramas." But it didn't do well. A newspaper wrote in 1914 that it looked "shabby and disconsolate."
Important theatre people like George Bernard Shaw wanted to save the building and make it a "people's theatre." But the start of World War I stopped these plans. Sadler's Wells became run-down. It closed in 1915 and did not open again after the war.
The Fifth Theatre: 1931–1998
Since 1914, theatre owner Lilian Baylis had run drama and opera groups at her theatre, the Old Vic. She kept ticket prices low so local, working-class people could come. In 1925, she started a plan to reopen the empty Sadler's Wells in a similar way. She raised the money, and the new theatre was designed by F.G.M. Chancellor.
The new theatre opened with a special show on January 6, 1931. It was Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, starring famous actors like John Gielgud. Having Sadler's Wells allowed Baylis to create a dance company. This was something she had wanted to do since 1926. The three companies Baylis started later became the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre, and English National Opera.
For a few years, the opera, drama, and ballet companies, called "Vic-Wells" companies, moved between the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells. But by 1935, drama was mostly at the Old Vic, and opera and ballet were at Sadler's Wells. In 1935, both the opera and ballet companies went on summer tours for the first time. When they were away, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company performed Gilbert and Sullivan operas. They came back to Sadler's Wells every decade until the 1980s.
After Baylis died in 1937, the Vic-Wells Ballet was led by Ninette de Valois. During World War II, the government used Sadler's Wells as a safe place for people who lost their homes in air raids. The two companies toured during the war. When the theatre reopened in 1945, the companies briefly reunited. But de Valois decided to move her main ballet company to Covent Garden in 1946. Sadler's Wells kept a smaller company called the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet.
The theatre also hosted the first performance of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes in 1945. Over the next 20 years, the opera company performed British premieres of works by Verdi, Janáček, and others. Britten's group, the English Opera Group, had London shows at Sadler's Wells from 1954 to 1975. From 1959 to 1985, the theatre was the main place for the yearly shows of the Handel Opera Society.
In the 1960s, there were plans for a new opera house. The directors of Sadler's Wells Opera hoped to move there. But the plans didn't happen. Still, they felt Sadler's Wells was too small for big operas. So, in 1968, the company left Sadler's Wells and moved to the London Coliseum. Sadler's Wells then focused mainly on dance. By the 1970s, many different dance groups performed there. These included Ballet Rambert and London Contemporary Dance Theatre, who stayed there for periods. Visiting groups included those of Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham.
After the opera company moved out, Sadler's Wells hosted opera shows from other groups. In 1983, a new opera company started at Sadler's Wells. It was called New Sadler's Wells Opera. They focused on light operas, sung in English. They performed in London and on tour. Their shows included The Count of Luxembourg, The Mikado, and Countess Maritza. They also performed H.M.S. Pinafore and The Merry Widow. Many of these shows were recorded. After their funding ended, the opera company faced financial problems and closed in 1989.
In 1994, a new leader, Ian Albery, started a plan to turn Sadler's Wells into a theatre built just for dance. While it was being rebuilt, Sadler's Wells temporarily moved to the Peacock Theatre in the West End. It has kept a presence there ever since.
The Sixth Theatre: 1998–Present
The newest theatre was designed by the Arts Team. It opened in October 1998. The design used parts of the 1931 theatre, which even had bricks from the older Victorian building. The new theatre has a larger stage, a 1,500-seat main auditorium, and three rehearsal studios. It also has the smaller 200-seat Lilian Baylis Studio for developing new and smaller shows. The current building is a Grade II listed building, meaning it's historically important.
The opening season included performances by famous dance companies like Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal and William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt. Opera groups like the Royal Opera and Welsh National Opera have also performed here.
In 2004, a new director, Alistair Spalding, decided that Sadler's Wells was best when it had its own dance companies and created new works. He said he wanted Sadler's Wells to be as important for contemporary dance as the National Theatre is for drama or the English National Opera is for opera.
Because of this, Sadler's Wells has hired more choreographers and artists. It now commissions and produces new dance works. In 2004, Breakin' Convention joined Sadler's Wells. This group shows the history and growth of hip hop culture through performances and education. Today, the theatre says it creates and shares more new dance works than any other dance organization in the world.
See also
In Spanish: Teatro de Sadler%27s Wells para niños
