Riverside Studios

Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London, arts centre housing theatre, concerts, films, dance programmes, and exhibitions. Originally a foundry, it was converted into film studios between the wars, and was at one time the largest television centre in Europe. When the BBC vacated the premises in 1974 the lease was acquired by the Hammersmith Borough Council, which in 1975 formed an independent Trust to administer the building. The centre opened part-time in 1976 and full-time in 1978. The theatre accommodates visiting British and foreign companies. It has also produced its own work, including several plays staged by Peter Gill, the centre's first Director. Among visiting companies have been the Fringe group Joint Stock in a dramatization of Robert Tressell's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1978); the Maly Theatre of Leningrad in Alexander Galin's Stars in the Morning Sky and the Asian theatre company Tamasha performing in Hindi and English (both 1988); and a Haymarket, Leicester, double bill of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and Catastrophe (1990). Artists such as Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Helen Mirren, and Vanessa Redgrave have appeared at the centre.