With new cuts to arts funding, small theatres will be the first to suffer. But their importance to communities has never been greater.
As thefts go, it has been all too predictable. The Olympics need extra cash, and so the Arts Council finds that its wallet has been nicked. The announcement late last month of a 35 per cent cut in Grants for the Arts - the pot that funds small-scale and touring theatre projects - will not be the final raid. With £675m of arts funding now earmarked for London 2012, everyone knows this is just the beginning. The great paradox is that it is local theatre - the very community- inspired projects that are supposed to be a legacy of the 2012 games and which helped secure the Olympic bid - that will almost certainly be hardest hit. And it is happening at a time when local theatre, once associated unkindly with summer Shakespeare and panto, has become one of the most potent forces on the UK arts scene.
Take, for instance, the extraordinary success of London's Arcola theatre in the heart of Dalston, Hackney. Since it was established in 2000, it has built up a committed audience in a deprived area where the lives of Turkish, Kurdish, West African and Jewish immigrants converge. Its burgeoning reputation belies the theatre's unlovely location off Kingsland High Street, and its cross-cultural appeal has fostered outstanding local work. Its latest show, Blame, is attracting audiences drawn from the very Hackney estates it portrays. "It is imperative to us to put on plays that are relevant," says Michael Harris, Arcola's administrator, and one of only three full-time staff. "Everything we programme has roots in this locality." As the West End prices itself out of the market, calling on ever more dubious celebrity casts to justify the expense, those theatres doing grass-roots work are seeing their audiences expand.
But local theatre's appeal is not merely that it is accessible. It provides a forum for individual communities to tell their unique stories - which often, like Black Watch, Gregory Burke's play about Scottish soldiers in Iraq, go on to assume a national importance. "There's an increasing recognition of the importance of the distinct regional voices," says Michael Boyd, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. "There is a homogenisation of culture, and local theatre is one major way of addressing that." Hamish Glen, formerly artistic director at Dundee and now at the Belgrade in Coventry, believes that local theatres are on the crest of a renewed wave of artistic freedom. "Because we're on the margins, there's something liberating in terms of ambition and experiment," he says. "There is that space to be able to tell stories that are particular that then reverberate universally."
Yet, even as the power of local theatre is increasingly acknowledged, it finds itself having to argue its case for the money that will ensure its survival. The solution could lie within the communities themselves. Battersea Arts Centre's high-profile spat with Wandsworth Borough Council - which planned to withdraw all funding on the grounds that BAC was too successful to be considered "local" - was won last month thanks to the protest raised by BAC's fans. And Harris points out that Arcola at first had no backing. "Of course the funding cuts are a worry," he says. "But we started from nothing - when we moved in, local people helped us paint the building - and we found a way to make it work because of the support of the local community." Theatre has never needed its supporters more.
West Yorkshire Playhouse
Opened on the outskirts of Leeds in 1990, West Yorkshire Playhouse is a venue that genuinely brings people together, thanks not least to its vibrant community programmes. "The theatre is a place where a thousand people gather every evening," says its artistic director, Ian Brown. "It provides that meeting place where people see each other and get a sense of who they are and what they are here for." The theatre (visit www.wyplayhouse.com) is full each and every day and night and has something for everyone, from the under-fives to the over-eighties.
Its diverse theatre programming also retains a distinctly local flavour, from Bad Girls: the musical (last year's big hit) to this year's Bollywood Jane. Yet Brown's productions of the classics - The Duchess of Malfi in 2006, Macbeth this spring - have also been admired. He laughs at the memory of the doom-mongers he encountered when he first went into the business. "Twenty years ago, everyone was telling me it was the end of the road for theatre," he recalls. "They said people will stay at home and watch films."
The Arches
The vaults under Glasgow Central Station are home to some of the most experimental theatre in the UK. The Arches, run by Andy Arnold, attracts a very particular audience - Glasgow's nightclubbers. Twice a month, it hosts the Death Disco, a club night that offers visitors a taste of the avant-garde. "It has a very decadent and theatrical feel to it," says Arnold. "It's music-driven, but there will be bits of theatre going on and it helps create crossover - a lot of people will come to the shows as a result."
Besides acclaimed international work (Russia's celebrated devising company Derevo is a regular visitor), the Arches champions local talent. Arnold has recently committed extra resources to a company-in-residence. And, as he says: "We don't ever want to lose sight of attracting new audiences from the mainstream."
Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Eight years ago, the Mercury was on the brink of closure: audiences were running at 10 per cent of capacity. When Dee Evans, who launched the theatre with Gregory Floy in 1998, went to the Arts Council for emergency funding and told assessors she planned to stage the classics, they all but laughed her out of the room. "They thought it was hilarious," she recalls. "They said, 'There's no audience for classic plays out there.' But we had nothing to lose because we were in such bad shape." The Mercury Company's first production was Uncle Vanya; since then, it has established its reputation as a first-class classical theatre ensemble.
Evans has committed to a company of actors who will work together for years, not just a season or two. She then sends the actors out into the community and schools through outreach programmes, to share their work. The result is that the people of Colchester have built up a strong and lasting relationship with the actors they see on the stage. "We spend very, very little on marketing, and we spend fortunes on actors," Evans says. "The function of any theatre is to engage and inspire by putting on plays. That's all it is - putting on plays."
http://www.mercurytheatre.co.uk
Battersea Arts Centre
Having been threatened recently with funding cuts, BAC, in south London, was saved by an impassioned protest. This is good news for the many artists whom it has spent the past two decades developing - including the Perrier Comedy Award-winner Will Adamsdale, the performance poet Lemn Sissay, and the musicals duo Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas.
At the beautiful old town hall on Lavender Hill, the former council chambers have been converted into studios and an informal bar where artists ask audience members what they think of work in progress. Anyone can try out an idea for a show at BAC's scratch nights (for more info see http://www.bac.org.uk). It was at one of these that Jerry Springer: the opera was born.
The artistic director, David Jubb, was moved by the public response to the threat to the theatre. "A huge number of people came forward and it's amazing to know there's so much love and care out there in the borough," he says. "Any decent local theatre is like a park: it's a public space that local people come to and grow up around. People say you have to decide to be local, national or international, but I think that's nonsense. You can have powerful roots that centre you but still be seeking to connect nationally or internationally."
Theatre Royal Stratford East
A major player on the London scene. Two years ago, it produced The Big Life, the first British black musical to open in the West End; this year it won an Olivier award for its hip-hop Pied Piper, as well as a nomination for its "outstanding" 2006 season, which included the Jimmy Cliff musical The Harder They Come.
It was here that Joan Littlewood found a home for her Theatre Workshop in 1953, breaking artistic barriers with work by and for the East End's mainly white working classes. Since then, Stratford East's work has changed to meet the needs of its new immigrant groupings. Under Philip Hedley in the 1980s and 1990s, it became a breeding ground for local black artists; now under Kerry Michael, it is a home to the area's increasing numbers of Asian immigrants.
Dawn Reid, today the theatre's associate director, started off working in the tiny box office under the stairs. "Philip [Hedley] is the real reason I've developed as a black woman artist," she says. "He was the innovator who really gave immigrants coming into the area a platform to try their voices out."
The Theatre Royal Stratford East is proud of its reputation as one venue where no visitor will ever be shushed. "We want people to be comfortable here, and to realise the doors are open for them," says Reid, "so if they want to chat about the show as it's happening, we're not going to be restrictive."
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