Drama at DEMBE Theatre

Drama is where this building started. Long before it carried the DEMBE name, the old indoor riding school at Pendley was converted into an arts centre by Dorian Williams, who founded the Pendley Shakespeare Festival in 1949 and ran it on this site for decades. Plays have been staged here, in one form or another, for the better part of eighty years. If you are looking for an evening of serious, text-driven theatre within a short walk of Tring station, this is the page that lists what is coming up and what has already been.

What sort of drama is staged here?

The programme is deliberately broad. In a single season you might find a Shakespeare or a Chekhov, a twentieth-century classic such as an Arthur Miller or a Priestley, a contemporary play that has recently finished a run in London, and a piece of brand-new writing being tried out in front of an audience for the first time. Some productions are large, with full sets and sizeable casts. Others are two actors, a table and a chair.

What they have in common is that the words do the work. Drama here tends to deal with the things that are difficult to talk about directly: family, money, grief, loyalty, the decisions people regret. A good play gives an audience somewhere to put those feelings for a couple of hours, and then lets everyone walk out into the car park talking about them.

Who performs?

Roughly speaking, the drama on this stage comes from three directions.

• Local companies. Amateur and community theatre groups from Tring, Berkhamsted, Aylesbury and the surrounding villages, some of whom have been rehearsing and performing together for many years. They are amateur only in the sense that nobody is being paid.
• Touring professional companies. Small and mid-scale companies who take a production around regional venues, often with a cast of four or five and a set that fits in a van.
• Our own young people. Participants in the Academy, who work on plays as performers and also as stage managers, lighting operators, designers and directors.

Keeping that mix going is a deliberate choice. One of the four endeavours set out in the theatre vision is to be economical: to offer subsidised rates to amateur and community groups so that a local company can afford to put on a play in a proper theatre, with proper lighting, in front of a proper audience. Professional work sits alongside it rather than instead of it.

What is the experience like?

This is not a large auditorium, and that is the point. Nobody is a long way from the stage, so you can see an actor think. For drama in particular that closeness changes the evening: a silence lands, a glance registers, and a whisper does not need to be shouted. Audiences who are used to the circle of a big receiving house often say they had forgotten theatre could feel like this.

There is a bar, and most productions have an interval. Performances usually run in the evening, with matinees on some weekend dates. Running times and any age guidance or content warnings are given on the individual event page, which is worth checking for drama in particular, since some plays deal with adult subject matter.

Tickets, access and getting here

Tickets are booked through this website, and each production has its own page with dates, prices and a seating plan. Concessionary rates are available on most performances for full-time students, children aged fifteen and under, over sixties, and registered disabled patrons and their carers. Proof is required, one concession applies per person per transaction, and concessions are not offered on every performance, so check the production page. Every ticket includes a DEMBE Theatre Restoration Fee, which goes directly back into looking after the building.

We are at Penny Royal Court, Station Road, Tring, HP23 5QY. Parking in the main car park is free. The theatre is a few minutes' walk from Tring station, which is on the line into London Euston in about thirty-five minutes, and there is a bus stop on Station Road directly outside. Wheelchair spaces are available in the auditorium; if you need one, or have any other access requirement, get in touch before booking and we will sort it out.

Coming up, and already been

Below you will find every drama production currently on sale, followed by the ones that have already played. We keep the past ones listed on purpose. A theatre's back catalogue is part of what it is, and if you saw something here in 2024 and want to remember who was in it, that page is still there.