From January 1985, plans were in place to break away from the Peckham Varieties, and Teresa Early, set up a separate company, New Peckham Varieties who were based in the church hall on Farnborough Way for five days and evenings per week. New Peckham Varieties was a separate body and operating under a different management and became the beginning of the company which would go on to be Theatre Peckham. New Peckham Varieties was formally registered on the 6th of May, 1986.

Operating out of St Luke’s Centre, New Peckham Varieties offered a wide variety of classes including the 4 o’clock club which ran every day after school in term time. They offered many activities for young people in the area including drama, music, dance, and even steel drum classes! 

NPV offered classes, put on shows in-house, produced touring shows for schools, libraries, and nurseries, as well as offering things such as cabaret’s, activities for adults, and parties! Much of these were designed specifically to help local people and families. This is shown explicitly in the activities for mothers of young children, and furthered in the direct appeal of shows to local young people who may have never been to the theatre before. 

Teresa Early and Roger Goslyn worked on consistently producing new shows for New Peckham Varieties to perform, both in-house and touring. Among these was the beginning of many book adaptations and long-standing collaborations with children’s authors, such as Janet and Allan Ahlberg, and Michael Foreman. 

• Point 00 South Cabaret 
• Dinosaurs and all that rubbish 
• Mrs Plug 
• Mrs Plug the Plumber  
• Senior Youth Theatre 

After some time, New Peckham Varieties was gaining so much traction that the hall at St. Luke’s Centre was no longer fit for the size of the company. In August 1992, NPV moved to a hall behind the Town Hall on Havil Street.  

The new location –  

Whilst at Havil Hall, NPV continued to expand and make impact not only in the Peckham and Camberwell area, but piquing the interest of projects such as Project2001 (a volunteering project run by the Royal Society of Arts) and National Theatre’s Connections project. What was then BT Connections was founded in 1995 and culminates in a festival of youth theatre groups performing brand new plays, commissioned by the National Theatre. NPV took part in the very first Connections festival, being shortlisted for their production of Snoo Wilson’s The Bedbug. NPV continued with this project, winning a chance to perform at Dorfman Theatre (then Cottesloe) in July 1997 with the new production of Travel Club and Boy Soldier. 

• A Boy and his Robot 
• Travel Club and Boy Soldier 
• Giant Bigbloke 
• Cinderella Shoeshine 
• The Snow Queen 

In 2001, New Peckham Varieties changed the name of their base of operations to the Magic Eye Theatre.  

The new name and branding of the theatre allowed NPV to promote it as a theatre in its own right, not just a place where NPV rehearse. It became a theatre first. On the Magic Eye Theatre website, the importance of the theatre as a place for shows and productions is highlighted when they explain that “this area of South London is severely lacking a good quality midscale venue and we believe that Magic Eye Theatre fills that gap”. Theatre Peckham has always shown itself to fill the gap in the arts whatever that may be in the Peckham and Camberwell area. Moving from filling the gap in opportunities, to the theatre itself. The theatre was fully equipped for sound and lighting, as worked as an exciting new venue for production in its own right. 

The theatre, Magic Eye Theatre is a busy working space. It doubles up as a workshop space, for scene building, a rehearsal space for young people’s classes and workshops. We also produce two or three shows a year. The shows are a main focal point for the local area – we are proud that our young people are so clearly talented, motivated and hard working. 

• Bird Boy (After having his popular book Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish adapted by Theatre Peckham, in 2003 Michael Foreman worked directly with Teresa Early to create an all-new play called Bird Boy).
• Michael Foreman Watercolours
• The Camberwell Beauty 
• Angel Point  
• Crocs in Frocks  

At the end of 2007, New Peckham Varieties changed the name of both their company and venue, matching and becoming something to more closely resemble what Theatre Peckham is today. 
The Christmas production of Mrs Plug the Plumber announces on the flyer that the company putting on the production is Theatre Peckham, formerly New Peckham Varieties. The new logo featured a red star and created a streamlined view of  

The 25^th Anniversary celebrations of Theatre Peckham saw [STUFF] and a revival of a much-loved classic, Dinosaurs and All That Rubbish. This time, the production was accompanied by an all-new cast recording.  

In 2012, Theatre Peckham unveiled a new design for the company, including a bright colour scheme and new signature font, where each individual letter is designed by students of the company.

Theatre Peckham has been a major focal point of the importance of theatre in a community and contributed heavily to the 2014 Royal Central School of Speech and Drama study on the worth of theatre to young people. The study took testimonies from young people based across the London Borough of Southwark including a collection of school, collages, and theatre organisations. Theatre Peckham held the most significant number of students involved in the study and Teresa Early was at the front of the conference at the end of the research. 

Read more about the research here!

The study allowed Theatre Peckham, and Teresa Early, to formally declare that they were achieving what they set out to for the duration of their existence. The students and young people of the company could come forward and show what an education in theatre meant for them in terms of a wealth of cultural enrichment. 

• Newspaper Boy and Origami Girl 
• Clown 
• Orlando and the Three Graces 

In 2019, founder Teresa Early announced that she would be stepping down as creative director of the theatre. Suzann McLean, founder of Young and Talented, was appointed the new artistic director of Theatre Peckham 

Since then, Theatre Peckham has continued to grow and change to support the local community and provide high-quality theatre for South London.  

In 2019, Theatre Peckham received its first Offie nomination.  

Offie Award Nominations:

• Sunny Side Up
• Robin Hood 
• Wonderland In Alice
• Ruzupnzel
• Extremism 

In 2022, Theatre Peckham won 2 Offie Awards. The Wonderful (December 2021) with Seb Chambers receiving best supporting role and the Theatre receiving the special recognition awards.