The Fire

In the early morning of Saturday 19^th May 2018, the iconic double-storey red brick building on Faraday Street, which had been La Mama Theatre’s home for more than half a century, was gutted by fire. By the time firefighters arrived, the roof was gone, the floor which divided the top storey from the bottom gulped up by flame, and the walls were threatening to collapse. It took a crew of 54 to get the fire under control, narrowly saving nearby buildings and preserving the building’s façade. When the smoke had settled and it was possible to survey from above the inside of the structure via the cabin of a cherry picker, it was confirmed that the fire, caused by an electrical fault, had ripped through the building so fiercely that almost nothing within had survived.

In the following days, with the walls propped up to prevent their fall, La Mama staff stumbled together amidst the wreckage, but though they were able to retrieve a few scorched keepsakes, an enormous trove of assets and archives were lost, ashes in an empty shell.