British Theatre Guide Blog

The Tories, says Jeremy Hunt, shadow culture secretary, are the natural party of the arts.

There was a time, even just a year ago, such a comment, if it didn’t draw derisive laughter, would have been ignored.  Jeremy who?  The Tories - and the arts?  Come on! 

This week, however, it has been widely reported and the meeting at the House of Commons at which he made his speech was attended by many theatre and arts luminaries.  So what’s changed?  Have the Tories suddenly become honorary luvvies?  Has the arts world had a road to Damascus conversion?

Of course not.  The answer is much simpler than that.  On the first anniversary of Gordon Brown’s premiership, when Labour is beaten into fifth place in a by-election behind the Greens and the BNP, the Tories are suddenly looking like the next government.  Indeed, if there were a general election tomorrow, David Cameron would be be getting ready to move into No. 10 the day after.

So it behoves all of us in the arts world to start taking a long and hard look at what the Tories are saying about their policies on the arts, because we could well be having to deal with them in the not too distant future.

A week, it was famously said in the sixties, is a long time in politics, so things could change before the country next goes to the polls, but it seems difficult to believe that Brown and his government can raise themselves out of the abyss into which they have sunk, so it might be a good idea to start getting used to the idea that Cameron and company might be holding the purse strings.

The first question that must be on the minds of everyone in the arts world is “Can we trust them?”  The devastation to the arts caused by Margaret Thatcher and her policies still looms large in the memory but Hunt (and Cameron) tells us that they have changed.  This is a new Conservative Party, with new policies for the 21st century, and the shadow culture secretary has laid out his vision for our artistic future.

It’s bright, but it’s the brightness of the sun shining through mist: luminous and attractive, but with all the detail obscured. 

• A “renewed” ACE, but quite how renewed we don’t know (except for the Tory mantra of “efficiency savings” - the answer to every economic ill)
• A new relationship between the Ats Council and the DCMS: he does support the “arm’s length” principle, but how long is this particular arm?
• Incentives for philanthropists (how very Victorian!) to give to the arts, but quite what they are we don’t yet know: it could be this, possibly that, or even the other
• Protecting the Lottery from “raiding” by politicans for “pet projects” by Act of Parliament - now that’s pretty clear: why do I keep thinking about the Dome?
• And he wants rid of the culture of target-setting and ticking boxes.  Remind me: who was it invented Ofsted?

And then he finds the idea of direct funding for major arts organisations by the government “interesting - indeed radical” - and doesn’t rule it out.  I can’t see Nick Hytner or Michael Boyd jumping with joy at that statement.  I’m certainly not.  He who pays the piper, and all that.  But of course it’s only an idea to be considered: it hasn’t been ruled in, but then it hasn’t been ruled out either.

The phrase “smoke and mirrors” comes to mind.

But I suppose we should be encouraged that the new Conservative Party feels it needs to cosy up to the arts world after the contempt with which it treated it in the Thatcher years.

And in case you think this is a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party, think again.  Yes, the arts are better off financially under Labour, but at a cost.  Whilst no one can quarrel with the principles of access for all and inclusivity, the pursuit of artistic excellence has been sidelined (by the goverment and, therefore, ACE - arm’s-length?) in favour of  using the arts as an instrument of social engineering.  There are those who would quite approve, but they are mistaken.  The arts should not be an vehicle for delivering government policy, no matter how worthy.  That way lies propaganda, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin and Adolf Hitler. If an individual artist or group want to use their art to put a point of view, political or social, that’s one thing: it’s quite another for a government to do it.

The question should be: can we trust any of them?  And that’s depressing.

In my musings  on last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, I suggested that major changes were in prospect which would radically change the event.  There was, I said, a widening gap between the “biggies” and the rest, ticket prices were increasing to a level which would mean the average Fringe-goers being forced to reduce the number of shows they see, and a call had been made for the number of shows to be reduced.  I also reminded readers that Bill Burdett-Coutts of the Assembly (he who suggested the cut in the number of shows) had some time ago suggested that the Fringe and the EIF should unite.

This year we learn that the “biggies” - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly - have set up a festival within a festival, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival on the Fringe, which has fuelled concerns over their dominance of the Fringe, to the extent that the City Council is talking about not allowing the two venues which lease council property - the Assembly and the Underbelly - to use them in future if the new development has an adverse affect on the Fringe (and what they call the Fringe “brand”) as a whole.

For some time the Assembly, Gilded Balloon and Pleasance have distanced themselves from the rest of the Fringe by producing their own brochure, and more recently they have been joined by the Underbelly.  Now they have produced the Edinburgh Comedy Festival brochure and are marketing it via a dedicated website.  Although they don’t actually say so, the implication of the production of a brochure for the Edinburgh Comedy Festival (even though the words “on the Fringe” are added) will have many believing that there is no comedy going on elsewhere.  The implications for the smaller venues are frightening.

As a theatre man through and through, I confess to have been worried for a while by the increasingly large proportion of comedy shows (not comedy plays: stand-up, sketch shows and the like) and this year comedy outstrips theatre  in the number of shows.  Now it seems that effectively (even if they deny this is the intention) the big four are going to corner the Fringe comedy market.  This will further marginalise the smaller venues so that some may well become unviable, which will have a knock-on effect on what companies (theatre, musicals and music as well as comedy) which can afford to come to the Fringe.

We need the small venues for the small, emerging, experimental companies - which, let’s face it, are what the Fringe is (or should be!) about- for they can’t afford the charges of the biggies, even if they can get them to consider their shows anyway.

We may not - I hope we will not - lose the smaller venues, but the gap will widen and the joint marketing muscle of the big four will mean the rest will have to work harder and spend more money (which they haven’t got) to attract the punters.

There is aready a big divide.  There are Fringe-goers (even some critics) who will not go to any venue other than the big four (unless it be the Traverse, which has always, by its very nature, been slightly separate from the rest). This is totally contrary to the spirit of the Fringe, which, for its sixty-odd years, has been a place for new companies, actors and writers to try out their ideas, hope to be “spotted”, get a post-Edinburgh tour (or at least a London booking) or, at the very least, good reviews for their CVs.  No one ever expected to make money: in fact, it costs most companies to perform there.

But now the big four are bringing in more and more commercial shows - especially in the comedy field: does Joan Rivers really need the Fringe? - with higher prices which hase the twin effect of drawing people away from the less commercial, more experimental work and reducing the amount of money visitors have to spend.  A double whammy!

Reading the public discussions on Fringe news stories on the Scotsman website - and ignoring those contributors who are patently anti-Fringe (or are well-known for whinging about everything!) - there seems to be something of a backlash developing.  Much of it is aimed at the Assembly, mainly because Bill Burdett-Coutts is the most vociferous and, it has to be said, confrontational of the big four bosses.

The Fringe has to change, for what doesn’t change dies, but we seem set for a period of change which is not organic, part of the natural order of things, but rather acrimonious and bitter.  My own hope is that the Fringe’s increasing commercialisation will be reversed, but I’m not holding my breath!

Updates to the BTG this coming week (Monday 16th June) will be a little erratic and will only happen in the evenings , except of course for the normal Sunday update, which will go ahead as usual.  The reason for this is that I am saving energy.

No, I have not suddenly gone all ecological! On Monday morning we begin rehearsals for a Theatre in Education piece for primary school kids about saving energy.  The original brief was very odd: the client (not our direct client, actually, because we are working through Creative Partnerships) wanted us to promote a government initiative to install cavity wall and loft insulation.  Now, apart from the fact that the newly-in-force EU directive on Unfair Commercial Practices make using kids to sell to their parent illegal, the thing wouldn’t work anyway.  Insulation is not the sort of thing which preoccupies 9 and 10 year olds!

So now the piece is about what they can do to save energy and reduce their carbon footprint.  And yes, we do explain what the “carbon footprint” is, although a primary head of my acquaintance tells me the  Year 6 kids should know anyway.

The danger of this kind of work is that it turns into preaching and we’re working very hard to avoid that.  Entertaining them comes first!

We do have a script.  We met as a company a week ago and hammered out some ideas.  I’d already thought of having the main character a very poor clown (poor in the sense of not being good at his job) and a couple of hours of brainstorming gave me the outlines of an idea.  So last Monday I settled down to write.

I got the bulk of the piece written (it’s very pantomime!) and then dried up.  How to end it?  After racking my brains to no avail, I emailed the lot to my frequent collaborator, actress and writer Viktoria Kay who had been at the brainstorming session, with a heartfelt plea for ideas.  24 hours later I got the script back - finished!  She added her usual caveat - “if you don’t like it, tear it up!” - but no need: it worked, so this week has been a mad scramble to find costumes and props.  It’s amazing how oddly people look at you when you say you want an inflatable hammer, an inflatable guitar and a pop star wig!  Not to mention huge red and yellow shoes and piles of newspapers, cardboard and egg boxes.

Well, how else would a clown set about insulating his house?

So at 10am tomorrow we start on our latest piece of what BTG reviewer Howard Loxton once described as “applied theatre”.   A week of physical routines, slapstick and very bad jokes, so that the following week we can set off to visit 42 primary schools in the space of a fortnight.  Or at least the company can: I’m too old to trash around the country doing two shows a day, each in a different venue!

I’ll keep you posted!  And apologies again in advance for the erratic nature of the week’s BTG updates.