The Acorn

The Acorn occupies a former Wesleyan Methodist chapel on Parade Street, a couple of minutes’ walk uphill from the Penzance promenade. Gay Sagar-Fenton bought the chapel in 1969 and gave it to a local charity, Penzance Arts Centre, so it could be run as a theatre. In 1987 the trustees of Cornwall Theatre Company, a small-scale touring company, took over the centre’s assets and liabilities.

A National Lottery grant in June 1996 paid for the refurbishment that produced the building people use now. Work finished in 1998 and reopened the venue with two spaces: a 170-seat main theatre and a basement bar and theatre holding 80. Further renovations in 2020 and 2021 added a permanent stage, removable tiered seating, a rebuilt green room and new projection and lighting kit.

The two-room layout is the point. The main house takes seated touring work and the basement takes standing gigs and smaller, rougher things, so the programme can run a book launch and a late music night in the same building on the same evening. Genres sit side by side: live music, comedy, dance, international touring work and shows by west Cornwall companies.

The Acorn has been part of the county’s theatre scene for longer than most venues here. David Mynne, a founder member of Kneehigh, is its artist in residence and has been based in Penzance for over 30 years; Kneehigh first performed at the Acorn around 1980, and it became a regular venue for the company. Mynne opens and closes his own tours there.

Parade Street is central, which means parking is street parking or one of the town car parks rather than anything attached to the venue. The upside is that you can eat in town and walk. For a bigger touring stage the county’s main house is Hall for Cornwall in Truro, about 26 miles north-east; for something entirely different, the Minack is nine miles south-west at Porthcurno.