Qualla: Traverse Theatre https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Traverse Theatre https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre Traverse Theatre: Introduction https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first venue was a long, low-ceilinged room barely fifteen feet wide and eight feet high on the first floor of 15 James Court in Edinburgh's Lawnmarket. Before the Traverse Theatre Club rented it in 1962, the building had been a doss-house and a brothel known locally as Kelly's Paradise and Hell's Kitchen. Sixty seats salvaged from the Palace Cinema were arranged in two blocks on either side of a strip of floor that served as the stage. The founder Terry Lane mistakenly believed that this kind of staging arrangement was called traverse, which is how the theatre got its name. He later realised the correct term was transverse. By then the name had stuck.

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Traverse Theatre: Eight Founders, One Mission https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit Ed and Eddie from Palo Alto, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Traverse Theatre Club was founded in August 1962 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes, Richard Demarco, Terry Lane, Andrew Muir, John Martin, and Sheila Colvin. Edinburgh already had a Festival, but the Festival happened in August and disappeared for the rest of the year....

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-eight-founders-one-mission.mp3 0:06 2 full Traverse Theatre: An Accidental Stabbing https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Globaltraveller assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. On the second night, 3 January 1963, the lead actress Colette O'Neil was accidentally stabbed on stage. The knife was real. It had caught in the folds of her costume and gone into her side. O'Neil continued through the rest of the performance. A doctor in the audience saw to her ...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-an-accidental-stabbing.mp3 0:06 3 full Traverse Theatre: From Sailmaker's Loft to Saltire Court https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1969 a surveyor's report declared the internal floors of James Court unsafe. The Traverse moved to a former sailmaker's loft at 112 West Bow in the Grassmarket, a larger space with a 100-seat theatre and flexible seating. The first performance there came on 24 August 1969. In ...

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Image: Kim Traynor | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-from-sailmakers-loft-to-saltire-court.mp3 0:06 4 full Traverse Theatre: The Names That Launched Here https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit dun_deagh, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Byrne. Gregory Burke. David Greig. David Harrower. Liz Lochhead. These are five of the Scottish playwrights whose careers the Traverse helped launch. As an acting venue, the Traverse hosted Tilda Swinton and Forbes Masson in the 1980s, Alan Cumming in a 1988 production of Th...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-the-names-that-launched-here.mp3 0:06 5 full Traverse Theatre: Filth on the Fringe https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit kim traynor, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Traverse was for years a touchstone for what could and could not be staged in Britain. Throughout 1965, when homosexual conduct between adult men was still illegal in Scotland, the Traverse Theatre Club was threatened with police raids because of homosexual themes in its prod...

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Image: kim traynor | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-filth-on-the-fringe.mp3 0:06 6 full Traverse Theatre: Still the Engine https://qualla.com/traverse-theatre/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Globaltraveller assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Traverse is still home to Imaginate, the Edinburgh International Children's Festival, and still acts as a host venue for Fringe shows each August. Sixteen artistic directors have run it across more than six decades, from Terry Lane through Jim Haynes, Max Stafford-Clark, Mike...

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]]> Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/v/w/traverse-theatre-wp/gcvw-traverse-theatre-still-the-engine.mp3 0:06 7 full