Is live screening leading to the “Tesco-isation” of the theatre industry? In a speech at the Westminster Media Forum, Elizabeth Freestone described some unintended consequences affecting the delicate cultural balance in the regional arts scene.
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Supporting the UK performing arts sector - talent, funding, partnerships and marketing (Westminster Media Forum)
Live screenings of plays from London are killing regional theatre? Or, live screenings of plays from London are saving regional theatre? Which one of these statements is true? Does experience lead to appetite or does saturation dull demand?
It’s probably too soon to tell. Not enough statistical information has yet emerged to look at audience crossover and the genuine impact on programming patterns in venues or ticket-buying patterns in people. For now all we’ve got is anecdotal evidence. So here’s mine:
I run a touring theatre company with the express purpose of reaching audiences who struggle to have access to professional theatre. We tour to village halls, colleges, pubs, market towns, studio theatres, arts centres. We do this because people living in geographically isolated places don’t have the same access to live arts that their urban counterparts enjoy. So I’m thrilled live screenings give my audiences more opportunities to experience theatre in places near them. I’m delighted the income venues get from live screenings helps them afford to programme live theatre in turn. But the infrastructure that surrounds how live screenings work can’t help but pitch us against them.
Here are four ways companies like mine are always going to be the losers in this new digital era. (Happily they are followed by six ways to solve it.)
So four problems, six solutions:
What we’re talking about here is the Tesco-isation of the theatre industry. The big guys from London blithely crashing into towns, unaware of the delicate cultural balance in that particular place. Each town has its own peculiarities dependent on transport, parking, schools, employment, demographic, population. No one size fits all. The regional arts scene is fragile; a few more kicks and it will break.
So what’s the answer? A joined up theatre ecology is not one where London money is spent on London productions which are then beamed into the poor starved provinces, as a bone to a hungry dog.
A joined up theatre ecology is one where regional theatre is beamed into London venues; where small-scale theatre is live screened just like large-scale theatre; where London companies tour the regions and where regional companies perform in London. I’m proposing a network of theatres that screen regional touring productions into their studio spaces. The programmer who cancelled our Rory Mullarkey date has shot herself in the foot – I’ve found another venue for that night and our friends at the Royal Court are going to live stream the show for us (nothing fancy like NT Live, just a single camera), live from a village hall in Worcestershire onto a screen in the Royal Court bar. How about reciprocal screenings from a rural to an urban venue? How about the National Theatre get out on tour so regional audiences can access their live work as well as their screened work?
When my productions are beamed from a village hall in Herefordshire into the Cottesloe, and when the National Theatre takes to the stage in Clee St Margaret village hall, that’s when we’ll know we’re all in the same game.
Elizabeth Freestone is Artistic Director at Pentabus Theatre Company.
pentabus.co.uk
This article formed the basis of a speech at the Westminster Media Forum: Supporting the UK performing arts sector ‐ talent, funding, partnerships and marketing, 5th June 2014. It was first published by Westminster Forum.