The QuestorsTheatre

Seventeen amateur performers founded The Questors in Ealing in 1929, first as the drama section of a junior arts club before settling on its current name at a meeting in a Soho restaurant that November. The group took over a disused church hall on Mattock Lane in 1938, bought the freehold in 1952, then spent over a decade fundraising before opening its present theatre complex on the same site in April 1964. The company now runs two auditoria, the 350-seat Judi Dench Playhouse, renamed for its most famous alumna in 2014, and the smaller Studio. Questors stages a year-round programme built and performed by its own membership rather than touring shows, and describes itself as the largest independent community theatre in Europe, with no second site.