The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes, Richard Demarco and Sheila Colvin. The Traverse Theatre company commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary playwrights, and also presents productions from visiting companies. The Traverse is used as a venue for Edinburgh Fringe shows in August. It is also the home of the Edinburgh International Children's Festival, previously known as the Imaginate Festival. History The Traverse Theatre began as a theatre club in 15 James Court, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, a former doss-house and brothel also known as Kelly's Paradise and Hell's Kitchen. It was "a long, low-ceilinged first-floor room barely 15ft wide by 8ft high" with 60 seats salvaged from the Palace Cinema placed in two blocks on either side of the stage. The theatre is named because Terry Lane mistakenly believed that the staging arrangement is called 'traverse'; he later realised that it is 'transverse' but it was already too well known to change it. In its first year of operation, a theatre conference was organised by director Jim Haynes, John Calder and Kenneth Tynan and included a happening involving Allan Kaprow among others. The first performance was on 2 January 1963. Following a surveyor's report in March 1969 which stated that the internal floors of James Court were unsafe, the Traverse moved to a former sailmakers's loft at 112 West Bow in the east end of the Grassmarket. This larger space had a 100-seat theatre with flexible seating configurations. The first performance in this venue was on 24 August 1969. In its early days the theatre included exhibition space for the visual arts, until 1966 when the administrators for that space – including Richard Demarco – moved away to establish what became the Richard Demarco Gallery. Current Traverse Theatre building In 1992, the Traverse moved to its current location, 10 Cambridge Street, a £3.3 million purpose-built two theatre space with bar café created as part of Saltire Court development on Castle Terrace. The theatre's first performance at this location was on 3 July 1992. Traverse 1 is the larger space with flexible seating that can be moved to create many different configurations (e.g. transverse, end on, in the round, etc.). The most common configuration is 'end on' and has 214 seats. Traverse 2 is the smaller studio space. New flexible seating was installed in September