Chickenshed announce Lou Stein as Artistic Director

North London theatre company Chickenshed have announced that Lou Stein will become their Artistic Director, taking over from company founder Mary Ward.

Chickenshed has been running for 42 years, and Ward was the first and, until now, only artistic director at the company.

Stein is the founder of the Gate Theatre, and has previously held similar roles at Watford Palace theatre. In 2014, he produced Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the Vaults, Waterloo, which was filmed and archived by the V&A Museum as a "significant production" of 2014/15.

He will lead the team of theatre-makers at Chickenshed, which runs theatre groups and courses for over 800 children and young people in the UK and Russia, and continue to promote the company’s ethos of "excellence without exclusion".

Chickenshed was set up by musician/composer Jo Collins, and teacher/director Mary Ward in 1974, and its trustees include Dame Judi Dench, and Trevor Nunn.

Upcoming productions include in the absence of silence, A Brimful of Grimm, and The Mariner’s Rest.