Literature and Spoken Word at DEMBE Theatre
There is a long literary thread running through this site. The arts centre that became this theatre was created by Dorian Williams, who founded the Pendley Shakespeare Festival here in 1949 and ran it for decades, staging the text out of doors each summer. Words spoken aloud to an audience are among the oldest things that have happened on this ground, and our literature programme is a continuation of that rather than a departure from it.
What happens at a literature event?
Several different things, all built on the same idea: a writer and a room. An author talk, where a novelist or non-fiction writer discusses a new book, reads from it and takes questions. An in-conversation, where an interviewer draws the material out, which usually produces the livelier evening. A poetry reading, by a single poet or several. A spoken-word or storytelling night, which is closer to performance than to a lecture. And occasionally a staged reading, where actors perform a text that is not yet, or never was, a full production.
Most include an audience question session and many include a signing afterwards, with books available on the night. In a room this size the questions are worth staying for, because people ask properly and get answered properly rather than shouting across a hall.
Do I need to have read the book?
No, and most of the audience usually has not. A good author event is a person talking well about something they know deeply, and that works whether or not you have read a word of their writing. If anything, these evenings are a better way of deciding what to read next than any review.
Poetry draws the same worry and deserves the same answer. You do not need training to listen to a poem read aloud by the person who wrote it. Hearing it is often considerably easier than reading it on a page, because the poet puts the stresses where they meant them to go.
Who comes to Tring?
Novelists and non-fiction authors on tour with a new title, historians, biographers, nature and travel writers, journalists, poets at every stage of a career, and local writers whose work is rooted in this part of Hertfordshire. Some events are run in partnership with bookshops, libraries, schools or festivals. Some are ours. The programme is deliberately not confined to one sort of writing.
Where an evening is more memoir or anecdote than literature, you will often find it listed under An Evening With instead. The two overlap considerably and we list each event wherever it best fits.
Is it suitable for children, or a group?
Children's authors and illustrators make excellent events for a young audience, and where a date is aimed at families or schools we say so clearly on the event page along with the suggested age range. Adult literary events are usually fine for an interested teenager and less so for anyone younger, simply because an hour of talk is an hour of talk.
Book groups and reading societies are among the most regular bookers for these evenings, for obvious reasons. If you are bringing a group and want to sit together, book early or contact us and we will arrange it.
Why we programme literature
It is inexpensive to stage, which keeps tickets affordable, and it reaches people who would not otherwise think of this building as theirs. Both of those matter to the theatre vision: to be local, providing an independent venue in the heart of its community, and to be economical, keeping what we do within reach of the people who live here. A literature evening is one of the most efficient ways a small theatre can be genuinely useful to its town.
It is educational too, in the plainest sense. A young person who hears a working writer talk about how a book actually gets made has learned something no classroom delivers as well. Every ticket includes a DEMBE Theatre Restoration Fee, which is reinvested in the fabric of the theatre.
Booking, access and finding us
Each event has its own page on this site with the date, price and seating plan. Concessions are generally available for full-time students, children aged fifteen and under, over sixties, and registered disabled patrons with their carers, subject to proof and one per person per transaction; where an outside promoter or festival sets the terms, the event page is definitive.
The theatre is at Penny Royal Court, Station Road, Tring, HP23 5QY, with free parking in the main car park and a bus stop on Station Road immediately outside. Tring station is a few minutes' walk, and trains reach London Euston in roughly thirty-five minutes, which makes an evening here workable even if you are coming out from town after work. Accessible seating including wheelchair spaces is available in the auditorium, and we would rather you told us about any access requirement before you book than tried to solve it on the night.
Coming up, and already been
Running times are published on each event page and are typically shorter than a theatre production, often an hour to ninety minutes with time for questions. Below are the literature events currently on sale, followed by those that have already taken place. The past ones stay listed, so there is a lasting record of the writers who have spoken here.
