The Curtain Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Curtain Close, Shoreditch (part of the modern London Borough of Hackney), just outside the City of London. It opened in 1577, and continued staging plays until 1622.

The Curtain was built some 200 yards south of London's first playhouse, The Theatre, which had opened a year before, in 1576. It was called the "Curtain" because it was located near a plot of land called Curtain Close, not because of the sort of front curtain associated with modern theatres, but of its proximity of the City walls, curtain or curtain wall referring to the part of city walls between two bastions.

History

Little is known of the plays performed at the Curtain or of the playing companies that performed there. Henry Lanman appears to have been its proprietor, who is described as a "gentleman." In 1585, Lanman made an agreement with the proprietor of the Theatre, James Burbage, to use the Curtain as a supplementary house, or "teaser," to the more prestigious older playhouse.

Curtain Theatre was an influential amateur theatrical company active in Glasgow between 1933 and 1939. It was seminal in reviving theatrical culture in Scotland.

Founding

Curtain Theatre was founded by Grace Ballantine, Molly Urquhart and Paul Vincent Carroll with the aim to support new Scottish writing for the stage and develop Scottish styles of performance at a time when Scotland's own native theatre traditions had been all but lost. It emerged from the dissolution of RF Pollock's short-lived Tron Theatre Club in 1932.

Productions

In the seven years between 1933 and 1939, the Curtain produced a full annual programme of plays and launched the careers of a number of playwrights, actors and impresarios who would be influential to the rising Scottish drama of the twentieth century, most notably Paul Vincent Carroll, Robert McLellan and Duncan Macrae. One of its most famous productions was the premiere of McLellan's play, Jamie the Saxt. Its early productions were by subscription in a dedicated small studio theatre which the company established at a private address close to the city's University district. After 1935, productions were mounted in Glasgow's Lyric Theatre.