Islington’s iconic King’s Head Theatre needs to raise £100,000 to ensure its survival while closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Upper Street theatre will be shut until at least the end of June, and relies on 80 per cent of its ticket sales to keep the venue open.

The theatre launched the careers of Alan Rickman, Joanna Lumley and Hugh Grant, and is also one of London’s longest running LGBTQ+ venues.

It’s director Adam Spreadbury-Maher said: “We desperately need more help to ensure we are able to survive our current closure. We are reaching out to the Arts Council and other small trusts for emergency funding. But even with their support, which we can’t guarantee, it’s going to be tough to get through the next couple of months. Put simply, we just aren’t sure we will survive this crisis. Despite taking advantage of the government’s furlough scheme, there are many more costs involved with running a venue. We have crunched the numbers and penny pinched but we need to raised £100,000 to survive potentially up to six months of closure and be able to reopen.”

The mayor of London recently awarded the theatre £800,000 to help finance its move to a space in the new Islington Square development up the road.

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