It’s a big piece, as community plays tend to be, covering the town’s past, present and future, and has over 40 parts for a range of actors, from 15 to 70+ (although they could be played by around 23 actors).  There’s live music, some dance and an opportunity for video work to be incorporated.  And it was to play in five different venues.

Funding applications went in months ago but were knocked back time after time and we eventually were offered funding (with a lot of strings, but we won’t go into that!) less than two weeks before we would have to begin rehearsals.  That’s a week to get the word out, followed by auditions on the Thursday and Friday, with rehearsals due to start the following Monday.

A thankless (although we worked extremely hard) - and ultimately fruitless - task.  The vast majority of those who would have been interested were already committed to other things and we were compelled to knock the project on the head.  Hopefully it might be possible to revive it next year, but who knows? It all depends on the funding.

And there’s the rub.  It turns out that the reason funding was refused was the fact that Viktoria and I were to be paid.  Naturally we were: it’s how we make our living.  But no: funders would not give money, no matter how worthy the cause, if anyone was to be paid.

Most of the organisers of Festival events are being paid, because they are employed by community centres, the local authority or schools and given time to do the work on the Festival.  Without their work the Festival could not take place.  They are professionals who are using their professional expertise to ensure the success of the Festival and are being paid to do so.  We, however, are freelance: nobody employs us full-time.  If we take on a project, then the project has to pay us, and this is what disqualifies our particular project from being funded.  We couldn’t even be offered a percentage of the box office income because Festival events must be free.

Obviously we’re disappointed - massively disappointed - but more than anything else I am saddened that the funding bodies seem to feel that either theatre is not important enough to be involved in a community festival or that, if it is, it cannot have any professional input. They’ll pay for transport hire, costumes and props to be hired , bought or made and lots of other expenses (all payment being made to commercial firms, of course) but not for the professional expertise which will bring the whole thing together and make it work.

Of course, it happens all the time.  You get actors being asked to take part in events or films for free because “it will look good on your CV”, even though others - such as the crew - are being paid.  I was, just this week, asked if I could put a producer in touch with some actors to play ensemble roles in a production for nothing (”It will look good on their CVs”), even though everyone else is being paid.

The problem is that we’re in theatre because we love the job and want to be part of it, so people do take advantage.  Profit-share in one thing - as long as it is fairly done and seen to be fairly done - but exploitation is something else.  I recently came across one company which was offering its actors £5 an hour for performances and nothing for rehearsals.  Now that is not only exploitation. it’s also illegal, but the idea of the minimum wage does not seem to have percolated through to the murkier parts of the theatre world.

What a business theatre is!

It wouldn’t be so bad if the shows concerned had different producers and were appearing in theatres owned by different managements, but that just isn’t the case: three shows, two of which were produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber (and one of these which he wrote) and the third appearing in a theatre he owns.  If that is not “unduly” promoting ALW, I don’t know what is.  A total of 39 weeks!

But the matter of ALW apart, there are a huge number of concerns here.

First, the BBC’s charter forbids it to take advertising and it can honestly say, hand on heart, that the letter of the charter has not been broken for it has not been paid by ALW, RUG or RUT.  But the spirit?  Smashed to smithereens!

Then there is the fact that this kind of reality show is cheap, lazy television.  The BBC used to be the envy of the world for the high quality of its programming and that was at a time when we felt that ITV was considerably inferior.  Now much (although, thankfully, not all) of the corporation’s output is far inferior to what ITV was producing then.

Third, the BBC claims it is promoting musical theatre and, to an extent, that is true.  However if this is the corporation claiming some kind of cultural high ground, then that ground is very, very shaky indeed.  Music theatre does not need that promotion.  Look at the West End: it is packed with music theatre, music theatre which puts bums on seats and makes money.  Last year was another record year for the West End and it was the musicals which pulled the crowds.  Look at regional theatre: bring a well-known musical to almost any regional receiving house and it will do excellent business, putting straight plays in the shade. Musical theatre is very popular: there is no cultural kudos in promoting it.

These shows, the Beeb tells us, promote new talent. Yes, but only in a very limited area.  There’s nothing wrong with talent shows - that’s how Eric Morecambe got started, winning an audition with Jack Hylton in a talent contest in 1939 - but these aren’t talent shows: they’re an audition for one part in one show.

But they’re not proper auditions. Can you imagine a teacher applying for a job having to teach a lesson and then either get the job or not on the basis of a vote by the kids?  It’s ridiculous!  These shows are not auditions: they’re a marketing ploy.

If the BBC wants to reclaim the cultural high ground (Huw Weldon, where are you now?), then there are many better ways of doing it.  As Spacey said, whatever happened to Play for Today? What about a theatre-related documentary?  It would have been fascinating to see how the National prepared for, say, War Horse.  Or what about letting us see how ballet dancers prepare?  How many people know just how demanding the regular morning class is?  I remember one theatre I worked at inviting the local football team to join a ballet company’s class: they were exhausted and suffering after fifteen minutes!

But it’s not going to happen.  As Spacey said, such things are not “sexy” enough.  Nor can they fill thirteen weekly slots for so little outlay.  We all know that there is theatre and dumbed-down theatre.  Both have their place but at least the dumbed-down version doesn’t dominate whereas, I’m afraid, dumbed-down TV overshadows the rest by a huge margin.

(As an aside, he’d sent me a notification it was on via Facebook. Up until very recently I’d steered well clear of social network websites but I was talked into joining and have not regretted it.  It’s proving very useful - and I’ve been experiencing some real “blasts from the past”, which has been wonderful. But back to the subject at hand…)

I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a very clever piece of writing, but that’s not why I brought it up here.  It occurs to me that the BTG is ignoring a whole area of dramatic writing and performance.  We cover live theatre, of course, and Philip reviews a lot of DVDs, many of which were originally TV programmes, but we (well, Philip actually: I’m sure his days are longer than those of the rest of us!) have only ever reviewed seven audio dramas and we don’t even have an index for them - which is something I’ll have to put right asap - but even they were on CD, not radio.

Perhaps we should attempt to extend our coverage. We aspire to be as complete a guide as possible, so it would make sense, but there are, inevitably, problems, primarily of time and personnel.

Should we?  I’d appreciate some feedback on this.

The server went down so I had no FTP access to update the site and the public, which was, of course, clamouring to read the latest news and reviews, were locked out.  Apologies for that.  But I must say that the techie folks at 1&1 swept into action and had everything running smoothly within a couple of hours of my reporting the fault.

They also say that troubles come in threes, so what’s going to happen next Friday?

He said then, “This is the first time that the arts council, as a single body, has led a single, integrated investment strategy for our regularly funded organisations. As a learning organisation it is important we now review that process in detail, establish what worked well and what improvements can be made next time. An external perspective on this is vital.”

As a member of the House of Lords (she is a Labour life peer) who has worked in senior positions at the RSC, the National and the Royal Opera House, as well as being a former Principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she is well qualified to do the job and has the political clout not to be ignored.  Her previous review pulled no punches in her assessment of the relationship between ACE and the DCMS and she expressed concern about the disbanding of the Arts Panels, although she did accept the reasoning behind it.

This disbanding is a move which has come back to haunt the organisation, as many of us thought it would at the time.  If peer review (which is what some commentators have called McIntosh’s task) is appropriate for ACE, then it is surely appropriate for its clients.  One suspects that, had the arts panels or something similar existed over the past few months, then certainly some of the more stupid initial mistakes (the cutting of the grant to the Bush, for example) would never have been made.

The reaction of ACE to the anger that was unleashed bore all the signs of bureaucrats rushing to cover their arses and the comment of the spokesman, that it had always intended to conduct a review of the funding process, reinforces that interpretation.

Bureaucracy and the arts don’t sit well together.  Bureaucrats like things neat and tidy, with boxes that can be ticked and priorities that can be itemised and met, but the arts simply don’t work that way.  Trying to straitjacket the arts thus leads to the sort of thing that we saw from “Soviet Realism” - although even there the greatest artists managed to make fools of the aparatchiks.

One hopes that Baroness McIntosh will show that the pursuit of excellence demanded by Brian McMaster’s report cannot be successful if it is weighed down by the dead hand of bureaucracy and that Alan Davey will learn from the mistakes of his predecessor and let the Council be arts-  rather than admin-led, and that it is truly a “learning organisation”.

I got a few hours break on Sunday night after uploading the weekly update and sending out the Newsletter, but then it was back to the computer to upload the Olivier results.  And fascinating they were too, not so much for who won what (although there were some surprises) but because of how they reflect the split that runs right down the middle of London Theatre.  As (almost) always, the successful musicals came from the commercial sector and the successful plays from the subsidised.

Plays have a hard time of it in the West End. They’re not a tourist target in the way that musicals are and so presenting them is a real risk.  A well-known star - preferably from Hollywood or, failing that, a major TV series - can make a play a West End success but not always: even the young J. J. Feild and the very experienced Angela Thorne weren’t enough to save Ring Round the Moon which announced early closure this week after less than a month.

This, of course, makes the Theatre Royal Haymarket rep company such a brave - and risky - venture.  I managed to see The Sea a few weeks ago on a flying visit to London and was greatly impressed.  The matinee was packed, so I hope that’s a good sign for the future.

Anyway, apart from the usual BTG daily editing and updating, I’ve had two new plays to read, a quotation to prepare for a Theatre in Education project, some work to do on my next production (including listening to hours of music), discussions about future plans for the company and, of course, planning the coming weeks’ North East reviewing.

I hate doing quotes!  Especially when you don’t really know what the job is going to entail.  You have to pepper them with so many ifs and maybes - how, for example, can you give a firm figure for researching and writing a piece?  It all depends on how much information is needed, how accessible it is, what approach the client wants you to take.  It would be wonderful to have an administrator/executive director so I could just concentrate on the artistic side but, alas, that would cost more than we’ve got.  I wonder how many theatregoers realise just how many companies are living from hand to mouth?

A friend of mine has just given up.  He’s been supporting his company financially by taking far, far less than he’s earned and actually injecting cash from other jobs’ earnings for years, and now he’s had enough.  I don’t blame him, but it’s so sad.  The theatre world is littered with the corpses of small-scale but very good theatre companies.  If the (financial) failure rate in the normal business world were a quarter of what it is in theatre, the government would be in a real panic.

And it’s not just companies: a young actor friend of mine, having just finished a run with a major national theatre company, is now cleaning houses for a living until, hopefully, the next job comes along.

What I haven’t (yet) done is write two articles that have been on the stocks for a few months or manage to get our What’s On pages online again.  Sheila Connor, who reviews for us in Surrey, sent me an email on Friday (now lost in the great email diasaster of Friday midnight!) telling me that I should delegate.  The fact is, I do but work has a habit of expanding to overflow the time available for it.

Back to my week: I’ve also changed my energy provider, thus saving £16 a month!

But I am going to the theatre tonight.  Not to review, just to watch. ‘Twill be a nice change!

A prosecution, or even a judicial review,  would have been a victory for intolerance. In spite of the ruling, however, intolerance from fundamentalists of all kinds will continue, for this kind of conviction of their utter rightness and the belief that their ideas should be imposed upon others is endemic in a certain kind of person.  Isn’t it time that the right to freedom of expression should be enshrined in our law?  Being, as we are, subjects with permission is far inferior to being citizens with rights.  I accept the right of the members of Christian Voice and their ilk, of whatever religion, to hold their opinions and try to convert others, but I want them to acknowledge that I have the same right.  Unfortunately they don’t, so that right should have the force of law, not just of custom.

It’s true though.  At Live Theatre in Newcastle on Thursday evening Fiona Evans (whose Scarborough is currently running at the Royal Court) had a reading of her new play Deepcut and I really wanted to be there.  But more than a week beforehand there were no tickets left so I went on the waiting list.  No chance!  I missed it.  I left it too late, of course - the story of my life…

But - and this is the pleasing bit - it does mean that there is such an interest in new theatre writing in Newcastle that they had to start a waiting list for tickets - and I was by no means the first on that list. And that is a very good thing.

It’s partially the fact that it was at Live, of course - the theatre has a loyal and enthusiastic audience - and partially because Fiona is developing quite a reputation as an up-and-coming playwright, but it’s good to know there is an appetite for new work in the region.  I do tend, at times, to get a little depressed when audiences turn up in their thousands for the umptyninth revival of Cats (much as I love the show), for some very ordinary middle-of-the-road play which happens to have a well-known face or two from the telly or for some tenth-rate comedy.

So my faith is restored.  Sorry I couldn’t make it, Fiona.  In future the first of my heart shall be the first of my hand.  No more procrastinating.  Hereto I’ve worked on the principle of never putting off till tomorrow what I can put off till next month: that must change!

Good Lord, I’ve just made a (very much delayed) New Year’s resolution!

So, congratulations to Daniel Day-Lewis and Tilda Swinton and commiserations to those who were in the running but didn’t make it.  I have to say, though, that I can’t really work up much enthusiasm and it rather looks as though people are beginning to feel the same way.  One little known fact about the 80th Oscars is that the US TV coverage now holds the record for having the lowest audience figures since records began in 1974.  It was 32m, which is 23m down on the highest ever, in 1998, the year of Titanic, and one million down on 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq.  I don’t have any international (including UK) figures.

It’s probably partly because most of the films were either European or didn’t do particularly well at the box office (or both) but I wonder if people are getting a bit sick of the hype?  I know I’m fed up to the back teeth with the celebrity obsession which seems to infect the print and broadcast media.  Popping into W H Smith’s recently I couldn’t believe the number of magazines dedicated to “celebs”, some (most) of whom I’d even heard of.  OK, the difference between the celebs at the Oscars and those who seem to live by the number of mentions they get in the press is that the former actually have talent but even then the number of column inches (sorry: centimetres) devoted to how much flesh the women were displaying outstrips (yes: deliberately chosen word) any talk of the films and/or performances by a huge margin.

It seems that celebrity doesn’t require any talent, skill, contribution to society or anything like that.  All it needs is to be known and suddenly people want to read about you, look at pictures of you and - especially - learn all about your love life.  And you make money out of it too!  You might just be 20 and have done nothing  more with your life than sat in the Big Brother house but you can publish your (ghost-written) autobiography, launch your own fashion label and get on the front page of The Sun.

What a sad society we live in.

If I want to find out what’s on at the theatre, I expect to be able to go o the site, click on something like “What’s On” and be taken to a list of forthcoming productions.  Then I want to find the production I want, click on that and be presented with the details.  Three clicks, that’s all.

A simple enough procedure, you would think.  But no: some sites have to make it extremely complicated.  There’s one - no names - where, after going past the “splash page” which simply says “Enter site”, you click on “what’s on” and are taken to a choice of various kinds of shows.  You then click on your choice and you are taken to a page which gives the barest details (name of play and author, plus date), and then you are asked to click on “More”.  Now we have the details of the play: a plot outline, details of the author and possibly the cast and creative team.  “Well,” you think to yourself, “I wouldn’t mind seeing this.  When is it on?”  Oh dear!  Another click required, to take you to the “dates and times” page.  Five pages so far!  Then one more if you want to book.  That tells you the number of the box office or, if you want to book online, there’s another link to click on, taking you up to seven.

It would have been far quicker to go straight to the “Contact” page, find out the box office number and ring them.  For goodness sakes, websites are supposed to make life easier!

There’s another where clicking on the “What’s on” link takes you to a page where you are given the choice of three different ways of finding out out what’s on: you can search for the show you want, you can look up what’s on this week, or you can ask it to list all the shows in the season.  Doing any of these takes you to a page which gives the most basic details, and you have to click on “More” to find out what you want to know.  Four pages.

If the site uses Flash rather than straightforward HTML or some of its more complex variants, you sometimes have to double the number of clicks because you have to click on a link before it actually becomes a link - “Click to use this control”.

When I first started to learn how to produce websites (way back in 1996, that was), it was drummed into me that you keep your content as few clicks away from the main page as possible - “No more than two clicks away” was the mantra.  While that is sometimes not possible, it’s a good idea to adhere to it as closely as you possibly can.  But seven?

Come on, designers, get your act together.  And marketing departments: if your web designers have fobbed you off with a site that takes far too long and the patience of Job to navigate through, demand your money back, sack them and get someone who considers the users rather than sees the site  as an excuse to show off their skills in Flash,  mySQL, PHP, ASP, javascript or any other technique which happens to be flavour of the week.