We have put together an email list of 31 activists who are contributing in different ways. Sadly, the theatre’s strategy is to stonewall us. They won’t answer any of our questions, eg about the consultation they claim to have done and the support they claim to have, as if they feared that doing so might dignify us.
Yet, we’ve held about 20 online conversations in front of 2,200 people… 106 people spoke against the name change, three in favour. We have 750 signatures on a paper petition and 1,250 on an online petition. We’ve spoken to hundreds of people face to face – nobody thinks the name change a good idea. The main reaction is incredulity.
Perhaps they know they cannot win a PR battle so are choosing not to engage in one but it’s an insult by a community theatre to the community it serves, in which it lives and it’s offensive to those who, for 35 years have regularly bailed them out of one crisis or another, including the 1987 fire. The people of Kilburn have saved the Tricycle before and intend to do so again.