We're all responsible for theatre's future – but are we all sharing that burden?

Speaking at The Stage’s Future of Theatre conference, Bristol Old Vic’s Nancy Medina talked eloquently about how we write the future, not just on our stages (crucial although that is) but more widely as an industry and as the individuals within it.

It’s an important point, particularly at a time when the industry feels under siege and the instinct is to batten down rather than look ahead. But keeping our heads down has consequences. 

On the morning of the conference, I read an interview with James Graham in the Times, where the two-time Olivier-winning playwright, raised on a Nottingham housing estate, said that if he was starting out now, the progression he has enjoyed would no longer be possible because the opportunities are simply not there.

“People get very excited about the debut play, and then don’t commission a second. Theatres can’t take risks, so it’s this vicious circle. We are in a dark place,” Graham said.

He’s right. The future is gradually being eroded and the cost-of-living crisis has impacted all parts of the industry badly. In the scramble to secure their own future, some are realigning resources and saying they no longer have the money to develop artists. I do think we should really ask ourselves if there is a point in a building with fully functioning toilets, a fully salaried staff and a great offer in the cafe, if it doesn’t meaningfully support, commission and produce the artists of today, let alone the artists of tomorrow. The loss of scratch nights since the pandemic is but one indicator of how support is being cut.

Challenges around project funding are deepening the problem as buildings can’t programme with ambition and confidence when there is such uncertainty around what will and won’t be funded. It leaves artists trying to make things happen themselves.  

What is the point in a building with functioning toilets, a fully salaried staff and a great offer in the cafe, if it doesn’t meaningfully support, commission and produce the artists of today, let alone the artists of tomorrow?

I recently received an email from a North-East producer, who was one of the many people I spoke to earlier in the year about the difficulties faced by artists and producers in accessing project grants. Her application had been unsuccessful, but like so many, she and the writer had decided to go ahead anyway. The play is currently on tour in theatres, village halls, community centres and libraries because the team didn’t want to let down the venues who had committed to it. The show is often selling out, but the lack of a project grant means that on every single date, the producer and playwright are losing their own money.

How can that be right? How have we reached a situation where artists carry all the burden of risk and if you have a great piece of new writing or a devised play or a new musical, the chances are that if you want to develop it, fully stage it and tour, the only way to do that is by raising the money to fund it yourself. 

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has always operated on this free-market model (with the exception of the few lucky enough to secure some help through showcases) but now, much of British theatre is functioning on the back of artists and freelancers, their free labour, maxed-out credit cards and payday loans. Immediately, that discounts large numbers of people from making any kind of art.

Medina has got the measure of this. As she pointed out in her speech, the writers are already doing their job – “the work is out there”. But the question she raises is: “Are we doing our thing? We who are in positions of influence, decision-making, power and status?” Medina pointed out that work has to find money, but should money be the preoccupation of the artists and writers? Isn’t their job to make the work? Increasingly, the money is their job if they want to reach the stage. But how can that burden be shared more equitably?

Medina said that, as an artistic director, she was finding it tough “trying to marry my ambitions with the reality of theatre’s current financial climate”, so she had found it necessary to reframe the problem and “say it out loud that I am working in a system that was never designed for me to work in – but a system is a set of procedures, and procedures are decided by people and I am a person. Writing the future is all of us, it’s all our responsibility. How do we as producers, venues, investors make meaningful space, create the infrastructure for new ideas to flourish, not pander to long-held ideas of what our audiences may want – but offer art that we didn’t even realise we needed?” 

It’s an excellent question and a crucial one at the moment. As Medina asserts, it will require integrity, generosity and heart to answer it on the part of every individual working in theatre, but particularly from those at the very top of the sector.