Bedlam Theatre is a theatre in the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. The building was completed in 1848 for the New North Free Church.

Venue: Bedlam Theatre
Town: Edinburgh, GB

Bedlam Theatre is a theatre in the Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. The building was completed in 1848 for the New North Free Church. After closing as a church in 1941, the building served as a chaplaincy centre and then a store for the University of Edinburgh before reopening in 1980 as the student-run theatre of Edinburgh University Theatre Company (EUTC), operating during Edinburgh Fringe festival as venue 49. The New North Free Church originated in the Disruption of 1843, when Charles John Brown, minister of the New North Church, led many of his congregation out of the Church of Scotland and into the newly established Free Church. The church was noted for its active mission and its ministry to students. After its congregation united with Greyfriars in 1941, the University of Edinburgh used the building as a chaplaincy centre and then, from 1975, as a store. The university gifted the building to EUTC, who reopened it as the Bedlam Theatre in 1980. It is named for the lunatic asylum, which once stood nearby. With a capacity of 90, the building remains the United Kingdom's oldest student-run theatre, hosting around 40 EUTC productions each year as well as up to eight shows a day during the Edinburgh Fringe. The building was designed in the Decorated Gothic style by Thomas Hamilton. It forms an important part of the Old Town cityscape, terminating the view south along George IV Bridge. The theatre, restored in 2012, has been protected as a Category B listed building since 2001. The New North Free Church originated in the New North Church, which, at the time of the Disruption of 1843, was meeting in the chapel at Brighton Street in the Bristo. In November 1842, prior to the Disruption, the church's minister, Charles John Brown, joined other evangelical ministers in promising to leave the Church of Scotland if state interference in the national church was not ended. After the Free congregation left the New North Church in May 1843, it first met at an independent chape