British Theatre Guide Blog

If you haven’t read our story about changes in the British Council’s culture department, I’d read it now.  You won’t believe it!

The arts panels, with names like Visual Arts, Theatre and so on, are to be replaced by groups which bear the titles Progressive Facilitation, Market Intelligence Network, Knowledge Transfer Function and Modern Pioneer.

Yer what!?

What the hell does that mean? And I have to confess that when I first read this I did not say “hell”, so I’ll not ask to be forgiven for the strength of my language as it has been toned down more than considerably.

Have the lunatics taken over the asylum? you may ask.  But no, this is the kind of language that bureaucrats invent to make people think they actually have something to offer and boost their own egos.  “If we use impenetrable jargon,” the theory goes, “people will think we are very clever.”  It’s management-speak gone mad, so perhaps after all the lunatics have taken over.

“What do I do at the British Council?  Well, I deal with Knowledge Transfer Function.  It’s very demanding, you know.  What, you think it means us telling people things?  No, not at all.  It’s much more complex than that! Dear me, yes.  Why, there’s a whole committee of us to deal with it.  Mind you, I hope I might be able to move into Progressive Facilitation next.  Now that’s where it’s really at!”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid - and frightening.  There used to be  committes which dealt with each individual art form and those committees were helped by advisory panels of experts in their fields who gave their time and expertise free of charge to enable the Council to show the best of British art of every kind to the rest of the world.  The British Council had a superb reputation both here and abroad for the work that it did in getting the word out to the world that Britain’s artists have a huge amount to offer.  It could speak with authority and was listened to.

Director of arts Venu Dhupa said the council is consulting on how to improve its impact, make better use of its networks and enhance transparency.  They’ve got a bloody brilliant way of going about it - get rid of the experts and hide behind meaningless jargon.

There’s been a lot of bad news recently: theatres closing (Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree last week) and this week withdrawal of grants from the very troubled Derby Playhouse, the National Student Drama Festival and the Northcott in Exeter and a major cut in the grant to Eastern Angles.

In terms of funding, we can probably expect more of the same in the weeks to come as Arts Council England’s regional offices decide their funding priorities for another three years.  Inevitably there will be uproar, protests and petitions.  Jobs will be lost and local people up in arms.  And what will make it harder to bear is the fact that the arts fared much better than expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review.  “If you’ve got more money, why should we be cut?” will be the cry. 

And it is a very understandable cry, but it would be a mistake to lump all the cuts and closures together  If we are honest - and that can sometimes be hard to be if you are involved - there are times when grant cuts are justifiable.  If a company or theatre is not reaching the standards expected and other unfunded groups in a region are, it surely makes sense to move the what is after all a limited amount of money to where it will do most good.  It’s hard on those who are employed in the affected organisations and also on their loyal audiences, but there are winners as well as losers.  It’s not as if the money is vanishing.

But ACE is a bureaucratic organisation and bureaucratic organisations can make mistakes, so their decisions must be carefully scrutinised to make sure they are soundly based.  And the decision making process must be totally transparent.  What are the criteria against which the affected organisations are being judged and how fairly are they being applied?  How well do the officers really know the organisation and its work?  How often have they visited? How often have they attended board meetings?  Is the decision made on the basis of a thorough direct knowledge of the theatre/company or is it founded on paper?  And if there is sufficient concern for an organisation to be in danger of losing its grant aid, have those concerns been raised with it and has it been given time to respond?  If the concerns appear for the first time in the letter detailing the proposed cut, then any organisation so affected is entitled to protest loud and long - and to be heard.

This kind of redistribution of grant aid is inevitable and probably in the long run healthy for theatre, but it must be done properly.  If it isn’t, then the guilty heads at ACE should roll - after all, they are dealing with the livelihoods of other people.  It is appropriate at Christmas time to insist on strict adherence to the dictum that what is sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the gander.

John Tusa’s Arts Taskforce has recommended that Arts Council England’s major Regularly Funded Organisations (ROFs), such as the RSC, the National and the Royal Opera House, should be funded directly by the DCMS, following the lead  given by the Scottish Parliament.

That’s the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and now the Tories in Westminster who want to extend their power over yet another aspect of national life.

Since Jenny Lee set up the Arts Council of Great Britain in the late forties, the arms length funding principle has been central and it must remain so.  For the government to fund directly is a very dangerous road to go along.  We may feel that (should they get into power) David Cameron and the 2007 Conservative Party would not abuse their position by putting political pressure on these organisations, but who can speak for future governments of whatever stamp?

Nick Hytner puts it very well in a statment to The Stage: “I have worked for continental opera companies whose funding comes direct from government. Bluntly, it comes with far more political interference and baggage than ours does. The arts council adds value to the national companies. There’s a productive two-way dialogue between us. Splitting us off would cause more bureaucracy and would waste time.”

The Conservatives have not said that they will accept the report’s recommendations (although the only thing they have definitely said they will not accept is taking sport out of the DCMS) but this is the first time that a major political party has mooted the abandonment of the arms length principle in England and it is a dangerous sign.  Already ACE is subject to government pressure to write its (the government’s) priorities into its funding decisions: once can imagine how much pressure will be put on the national ROFs if they come under direct government control.

This is very worrying.

So details of the Comprehensive Spending Review have now been revealed and the Arts have fared better than expected.  We were warned that the best we could expect was an increase in line with inflation but standstill funding and even a 5% cut were suggested as possibilities.  Indeed, the general feeling was that standstill was the best we could expect and government sources were mentioning a possible 5% cut in order to make standstill funding (which is, of course, essentially a cut in real terms) seem attractive.

But no, we have an increase in line with inflation  over the next three years in the funding to the DCMS and now the culture secretary has announced that the grant in aid which the Arts Council will receive will increase, over the three year period of the CSP’s life, of 1.1% above inflation.  That’s £28m over three years.

But let’s not get too celebratory too soon.  We still have the Cultural Olympiad to pay for, which means that ACE will not have all that money to spend as they wish.  Quite properly, the department has said that free entrance to museums and galleries will be protected, so spending there will increase by at least the rate of inflation, so the amount available for theatre will not be as much as first impressions may suggest.

It is still going to be a very tough period for theatre companies.  We have yet to learn how ACE will allocate its money: will RFOs (Regularly Funded Organisations) get a full inflationary increase?  If they do, then the amount available for the Grants for the Arts scheme, which is essentially project funding, will be reduced.

It’s a tough call.  Is it more important to fund ACE’s big clients or emerging companies which are asking for a lot less money?  I’m a trustee of a RFO, so obviously I want its grant to continue at as high a level as possible, but I’m also the artistic director of a company that depends on Grants for the Arts to be able to deliver our projects.  How can I choose between them?  How can ACE choose between them?  If both deliver the goods, how can one be called more important than the other?

One thing is sure: there are going to be some theatre organisations which are unhappy, but probably fewer than we feared would be the case.

Because (s)he can’t do right for doing wrong.

This week I’ve had complaints about reviews on the BTG from two people.  One complained that the reviewer had done such a detailed study of the play that he (the complainant) now didn’t need to see the play and so was annoyed.  Another (dealing with another play and another reviewer) complained that the critic was too critical and that such critics are killing the development of new writing by making adverse comments.

As a responsible editor - of course! - I went back to the reviews in question and looked at them again.  The first was an enthusiastic review of a very complex piece and it needed the exposition to make the review comprehensible and, as for the second, I contacted the reviewer who simply said that it was a bad piece of writing and a poor performance and that was the general consensus on press night.

Meanwhile I had an email about one of my own reviews, thanking me for being so positive.  All I’d done was say what my reactions to the play and the performances were, which is all I - and every other critic - ever do.  Still, I am human (although there are some whose work I have reviewed who don’t think so) and it is nice to be thanked for doing your job.

But the whole business shows the ambivalent relationship between critics, their subjects and even their readers. Some time ago I had an email from a reader who was annoyed that one of our reviewers had given a very positive review to a play which he (the reader) hated.  This particular character even suggested that there is a deliberate conspiracy in the theatre world to pretend that the playwright in question (who is one of our leading writers, but I shall go no further than that in revealing his identity) is good when he is, the reader suggested, without any talent at all.

All a critic can do is detail his/her own reaction to a play or performance.  In the case of those critics who, for example, write for the major nationals and for websites such as the BTG, their reactions are informed by a long history of theatre-going and/or professional involvement.  These critics probably see more productions in a month than the average reader sees in a year, so inevitably their reactions are going to be affected by that accumulation of experience.

Many - in fact, seventeen - BTG reviewers are actively involved professionally in theatre as actors, directors or writers.  Some have been so for a very long time - in my own case, for more than fifty years.  In some cases our backgrounds are in classical and in others in new and experimental theatre.

Does this sort of background make for better or worse critics?  I would suggest better.  The wider the experience against which to assess a piece, the better the assessment can be.   But it does mean that our reactions are likely to differ from those of audience members who have less experience.  However in the majority of cases the critics tend to agree in their general assessment of a piece, which does say something - but nothing whatsoever to do with any conspiracy to build up or damn a writer/director/actor!

The fact that there has been complaint from existing Edinburgh theatres about the proposal to make the Assembly Rooms a year-round venue for professional productions (see our news story) has excited quite a debate in Scottish (and particularly Edinburgh) theatre circles.  The general consensus seems to be one which has resonances throughout the UK, that what is needed is not another large- or even mid-scale receiving house but small spaces (such as the Garage Theatre which the city council closed down) which can be used by emerging companies to experiment with new writing or new approaches.

Glasgow, we are told, has such places, and of course there are a lot in London too, but Edinburgh is not alone in lacking them.  Indeed there are very few suitable spaces throughout the UK and those which do exist often struggle daily to survive and depend upon the hard work, commitment and often money of dedicated individuals and groups.  Funding - either from under-pressure Arts Council or local authority sources - is hard to come by.

Yet a healthy theatre scene needs a firm foundation of experiment and innovation and much of this comes from small companies which are pushing the boundaries, whose work will not fill even 200-seater venues, who have to take the risk of using often totally unsuitable non-theatre spaces

Clearly funding such spaces is not attractive to big companies - they want maximum advertising exposure for their money - and funding organisations and local authorities have lots of demands on what they have available, so what chance does small-scale theatre have? 

Not a lot, actually, unless the companies do it themselves.  Here’s a suggestion: a group of companies get together and, together, approach a central pub which has a spare room of the right size.  They pool their resources and approach the pub’s management to ask them to make the room available free of charge, pointing out that this will attract new customers into the pub who will spend money on drink, in just the same way as a lot of pubs offer their “function room” free.  They approach the local Arts Council office to fund (or part-fund, if they have some cash or can get small-scale funding from local - possibly even in the same street - businesses) a basic conversion - some blacks and  a simple sound and lighting system - and they then collaborate to programme the space.  Perhaps the companies may need to pay a percentage of their box office take for the mainenance of the equipment/ insurance and so on.

Worth thinking about?  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s tried this, who can point out the pitfalls and would be willing to share their experiences.

How quickly things change!

When the prototype BTG began back in April 1997 as British Theatre at The Mining Company (long story: the BTG as it is now actually made its appearance in November 2001), the big thing was links - links, links and more links.  That’s what the company wanted, because that was what people wanted.

Those were the days when we talked about “surfing the Net”, and that’s what people did: went to a site, had a quick look, then hunted out that site’s list of links and followed one that looked interesting.  They “surfed” from site to site.  That’s what The Mining Company demanded of those of us who ran their sites, to list as many sites on our topic as we could find, plus comments so that our surfers would know what to expect when they got there.  By the end of 1997, the British Theatre site consisted of a few pages of general comment on theatre in the UK and page after page of links - over 2,000 of them (liks, that is, not pages!).

I suppose it was the excitement of this new medium, that one could view, in the comfort of your own home, sites based in countries throughout the world.  You want to know about a famous actor?  Ken Branagh was very big then and the MC British Theatre site listed a dozen or more, and people surfed from one to another, only to find that most had much the same information (and much the same photos).

How things have changed!  Not only has the Net grown up, but its users have too, and what they look for nowadays is reliable sources of information, and when they find one, they tend to stick with it.

 Even in 2001 our most viewed pages were what we called - a hangover from the Mining Company, this - our Links Libraries.  Now they are among the least visited pages and Reviews and News pages vie with each other for the top slot. 

 I have to say that I am delighted at the change.  It used to be very depressing (nay, boring!), going from site to site on the same topic only to find the same information expressed in slightly different ways.  At one point early on I got my wrist slapped because I started running news pages: “British theatre surfers,” they told me from the company office in West 42nd Street, New York, “don’t want news: they want links.”

Perhaps, I replied, they are looking for links to theatre news. Aha! bulb lights up!  OK, I could go ahead with the news pages.

I’m not claiming any special brilliance for “discovering” this, because all I was suggesting was what I wanted when I was surfing on my own accord and not for the company.  This was the time when we referred to the Net as the “information superhighway”, the operative word being “information”.

The other major change, at least as far as theatre sites are concerned, is the increase in reliable sources of information about actors, theatre companies and theatres, especially about actors.  In the early days I used to talk about the “slobber drool factor”, the high incidence of sites devoted to actors (and actresses) which were motivated by love (or lust) on the part of the site authors.  Look at actors’ sites now: those which are not put online by the actors themselves as part of their marketing strategy deal in hard information.  Their authors have discovered that waxing lyrical over their subjects’ beauty, attractiveness, sexiness even, does not tempt anyone other than a few poor souls similarly driven by oestrogen or testosterone!

The Web, ladies and gentlemen, has grown up!

It’s started - the usual moral outrage about something at the Edinburgh Fringe, and it doesn’t officially open till the weekend!

There is an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website, calling upon the Prime Minister to “condemn this tasteless portrayal of terrorism and its victims” in the form of the show Jihad the Musical.  Quite how the mover of the petition knows that it is tasteless is not clear but the show’s producers have been quick to defend themselves: “We have no intention of causing offence or insult with this show,” said producer James Lawler.

Why not?  The only way to avoid giving offence to someone is to produce theatre that is so bland that it says nothing - but you’ll then offend others - especially me! - by making theatre boring.

As Nick Hytner said some months ago - no one has the right not to be offended.

But the searching for offence brigade find rich pickings at the Fringe.  One show, Prodigal Daughter at C Chambers Street, has fallen foul of the censor morons, as D H Laurence called them, because of its poster.  Shockingly the poster shows a cartoonish pencil drawing of a naked woman (coloured a rather unbecoming and very unnatural pink)!  I’ve seen it and was horrified to realise that you can actually see a small scribble which represents pubic hair!  I mean, I didn’t realise such things existed!

And who is protesting?  Well, director Asa Gim Palomera says some of the shops have refused to take the poster but the main ban has come from - wait for it! - C Chambers Street.  That’s right: the venue at which the play is being performed.

They do children’s shows, you see, so they think the poster is “inappropriate”.  I’ve spent many an hour in C and I can tell you that their walls are so plastered with posters that you have to really focus to make one out from another - and I’ve never seen any children looking at them: they’re far to busy doing childreny things.

If the Edinburgh Fringe is to have any value, it has to have artistic freedom at its heart, and that means in its advertising materials as well as its performances.  OK, any advertising much comply with the law, I understand that, but when a central part of the Fringe starts setting itself up as a guardian of morality, that’s a political correction too far!

I was saddened today to hear of the death of John Normington.  He was one of those numerous British actors whose name and face you know but often can’t put the two together.  You hear his name and think, “Ah yes!  He’s good!” but can’t put a face to the name, or you see him in something on TV and think, “Who is that?  I know the face.  He’s really good.”

 There are so many like him, actors who are constantly working and turning in fine performances but who have never, for whatever reason - and it has nothing to do with talent for he (and they) are very talented - never quite made it to the top of the tree.  But they are the foundation stones of British theatre: the actors who year after year produce the goods, whether in small parts or large, turning up on stage in a huge variety of theatres, from the RSC and the National to regional theatres to fringe theatres, or on TV or in films.

Without them British theatre would not be the envy of the world, for the big names are all very well - and we all enjoy seeing the Ian McKellens and the Judi Denches and the like - but without the support they get from people like John Normington, they (and I’m sure they would be the first to admit this) would not reach the heights they do.

He will be sadly missed, but we are fortunate that we do have strength in depth in the acting talent of this country and there are others who will carry on in the same tradition, the backbone of British theatre.

The Scotsman online gives its readers the opportunity to respond the news stories by uploading their comments.  It’s just been carrying the story of Fringe venue managers Understairs Arts and the effect its liquidation has had on the companies booked into the venues.  Among the comments are two by people who could well be in the running for the title Right Pillock of the Year.

One said:

Who does this really affect?

Some rich, work-shy Oxford and Cambridge students on a summer jolly to Edinburgh.

They really don’t deserve any sympathy.

This will give them the opportunity to do some real work this summer for a change - but I suspect that they’ll just spend August in mummy and daddy’s Tuscan villa!

There will be plenty of other crappy shows on offer for all the tourists who have somehow been duped into believing that there are some Fringe shows that are actually worth seeing!

I merely point this out: it isn’t worth commenting upon.

However there is another comment - “good.. stop wasting money on fringe… do some goodthings with that” - on which I will comment, for it reveals a monumental ignorance which should not be ignored.

The last I heard, Edinburgh City Council gives £60,000 to the Fringe.  In return, last year the Fringe sold over one million tickets.  At an estimated average price of £7, this brings in £7m, much of which will go straight into the local economy.

Then there’s the money spent by companies, audiences, promoters and journalists in the hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, cafes, pubs, shops, buses, taxis and so on and so on and so on.  That will run into millions.  Let’s say that altogether the Fringe brings in £10m to the Edinburgh economy.  Not a bad return for a £60,000 investment.  I wish I could find an investment which would give me that sort of return in just four weeks!