| Variations of Name | Lena Margaret Pocock | Lena Margaret Ashwell |
| Biography | Lena Ashwell OBE was a British actress and theatre manager and producer, known as the first to organise large-scale entertainment for troops at the front, which she did during World War I.
She was born on the Wellesley while anchored in the River Tyne, at the time under her father's 'command' as a home for boys 'unconvicted of crime' but under suspicion. She studied music at Lausanne and at the Royal Academy of Music. Her voice however was insufficient for performance and she took up acting instead, thereafter styling herself as "Lena Ashwell".
In 1891, she debuted in The Pharisee, and in 1895 she appeared in King Arthur, by J. Comyns Carr, with Dame Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving. She went on to appear in a number of Shakespeare productions, in Quo Vadis (1900), and as the lead in Mrs Dane's Defence (1900) and Leah Kleschna (1905). In 1906, Ashwell starred in The Shulamite, a melodrama about a South African woman in an unhappy marriage who falls in love with a visiting Englishman. The show ran for 45 performances at the Savoy Theatre between 12 May and 26 June 1906.
In 1906, Ashwell took up theatre management, initially at the Savoy Theatre, then in 1907 she established her own theatre known as the Kingsway.
During World War I she was an enthusiastic supporter of British war aims. Partly due to the influence of her acquaintance Princess Helena Victoria, and her connections to the YWCA, she was given permission to take a group of entertainers to the Western Front. Ashwell herself travelled to the front and became involved in fundraising and logistics of the concerts, as she believed in 'uplifting and therapeutic' power of music. After the war, Ashwell formed the Lena Ashwell Players which continued to appear throughout London and of whom Laurence Olivier was later to become a member. In 1924, she took over the old Bijou Theatre in Bayswater and renamed it The Century Theatre. This became the headquarters of The Lena Ashwell Players. |