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My father's obituary from The Independent, a national newspaper in the UK. This could be the first time he was ever called a theatre impresario, and if there is a heaven I expect he's having a good chuckle about it. But why not, it was one of the hats he wore.
|
Kenneth David Belden,
theatre impresario: born Banbury, Oxfordshire 17 June 1912; married 1946
Stella Corderoy (died 1998; one son, one daughter); died Stevenage,
Hertfordshire 27 November 2002. |
Kenneth Belden was the chairman of the trustees of the Westminster Theatre
during the 1960s and 1970s when it was the centre of Christian drama in the West
End. Belden's vision and drive turned the theatre – developed out of the shell
of the 18th-century Charlotte Chapel – into a modern arts centre with some of
the best theatre facilities in London.
The aim was to present plays that would "give people new courage and
purpose". Belden saw the theatre as a bid to change the moral climate of
the nation at a time "when the kitchen sink, the theatre of cruelty and the
theatre of the absurd dominated the London scene". He was particularly
interested in the palpable effect that professional Christian drama could have
on people. He delighted in stories of couples' leaving the theatre determined to
patch up their failing marriages or trade unionists and employers' finding
common purpose.
The theatre had been bought in 1946 by the Westminster Memorial Trust, set up
by the Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement as a "living memorial" to
those who had died in the war against Hitler. Returning servicemen donated their
war gratuities towards its purchase. Several of Belden's close friends had been
killed in the Second World War and he believed theatre could convey the values
needed to underpin freedom and democracy.
At first the Westminster staged MRA's amateur productions. But in 1961, when
Belden took charge, the trust began hiring professional casts, in plays and
musicals written mostly by Peter Howard and Alan Thornhill. Howard's Christmas
pantomime Give a Dog a Bone ran for 11 seasons. One season included an unknown
Elaine Paige, another the singer Liz Robertson. Howard's Mr Brown Comes Down the
Hill was a hard-hitting play about what might happen to Christ were he to return
to the modern world. Thornhill's popular musical Ride! Ride! was about John
Wesley, while his play Sentenced to Life, written with Malcolm Muggeridge,
looked at euthanasia. High Diplomacy, a musical by Alan Thornhill and Hugh
Steadman Williams with music by Will Reed, starred the American mezzo-soprano
Muriel Smith, while a satirical review, GB, starred the French mime artist
Michel Orphelin. Other plays addressed drug addiction, industrial conflict,
class war and the Cold War.
The Westminster also pioneered "A Day of London Theatre" for
schools, which, over 22 years, was attended by over 200,000 pupils and teachers.
Parties were taken behind the scenes and then saw a performance.
Kenneth Belden was born in Banbury in 1912, the son of a distinguished
Congregational minister, and was brought up in Crowhurst, surrounded by people
of the cloth. At the age of five he precociously asked his mother, "What
exactly is the Trinity?" He inherited his father's cheerful disposition.
But he was inhibited by shyness and by the time he went up to St Edmund Hall,
Oxford, in 1931 to read History he had lost his faith, in despair about his
weaknesses which he thought were beyond the reach of a merciful God. His
encounter with the Oxford Group, the forerunner of MRA, completely changed his
life.
The group's advocacy of taking time to listen to the "still, small voice
within" particularly touched him. It was like "being lifted to a new
level of living", he wrote in his book The Hour of the Helicopter (1992).
He never looked back and, on graduation, felt called to work full-time with the
group. His artistic talents, particularly as a typographer, were employed in
running the group's publishing. "Designing a piece of print was like
writing a sonnet," he said.
He worked closely with Stella Corderoy developing MRA's publications and they
were married in 1946. That year, MRA's international conference centre for
reconciliation opened in the Swiss Alpine village of Caux, and Belden and his
wife later spent four years in Switzerland from 1948, helping to run the centre.
Returning to London in 1952, Belden joined the Council of Management of the
Oxford Group, the registered Christian charity that had launched MRA. He came to
his post at the Westminster almost by default. The theatre's trustees included
the 1930s tennis star Bunny Austin and his actress wife Phyllis Konstam. They
wanted an additional trustee from the Oxford Group's Council. Belden was the
only person available. Within weeks he was elected the trust's chairman. Thus,
the son of the manse found himself an impresario, mounting plays from the pulpit
of theatre, that aimed to counter nihilism with a message of faith and hope.
Already in 1955 Belden, walking past the theatre's courtyard, had realised
"with the absolute force of revelation" how the site might be doubled
in area to include a restaurant and conference facilities, a spacious foyer and
adequate dressing rooms for the actors. Now, he found himself in charge of
raising the £500,000 needed. It was a daunting act of faith in which he was
sustained by a line from Thomas Traherne: "Wants are the fountains of
felicitie." Welsh slate was donated to clad the building's façade, while a
Sudanese government minister gave a gift of leather for the foyer panels.
The new arts centre was opened in 1966, dedicated by the Bishop of
Colchester, and was further expanded in 1972 with two additional floors of
offices for MRA. In the first 10 years alone of Belden's tenure, over a million
people from 100 countries paid for tickets at the Westminster.
Belden retired in 1980 and 10 years later, with production costs rising
prohibitively, MRA pulled out of professional theatre. The Westminster, whose
history Belden wrote in 1965 (The Story of the Westminster Theatre), was
eventually sold in 1998; the building was unfortunately gutted by fire earlier
this year. MRA, renamed Initiatives of Change, has relocated its London
headquarters in Victoria.
In retirement, Ken Belden enjoyed his move to a small community in Knebworth,
Hertfordshire. He was an active member of the local church, St Martin's, and
widely respected in the village.
Michael Smith