American writers’ punchup
There’s a good ol’ barney sparked by Neil Labute.
Labute throws a good left hook. Calling writers pussies for not tackling the greater world around them. Audiences as wimps too.
George Hunka takes the hit and throws a one-two combination back citing several American counter examples.
They then trade a few blows on the blog (do check it out) before scaling back the blows as they both probably fight on the same side.
But. Then. Into the ring. Naomi “upper cut” Wallace. With kick ass power she reels off a list of deeply engaged writing, enthusiastic audiences of The People Speak Project and claims Labute is myopic.
But NL is out of the ring and simply awaits a Wallace play back in the USA. He wants to be shown how it’s done.
I’ve got to scurry away outta the audience and finish writing my play (and several more) before I’m worthy to get in the ring with these bruisers.
Compare & contrast: Dance / Theatre
I found the review of I am Falling at the Gate by Lyn Gardner, Guardian theatre critic, laid side by side to Luke Jennings’ review, Guardian dance critic, insightful as to the different qualities each look for / are looking for:
Both good reviews -
“…Occasionally, the movement only seems illustrative, but text, motion, lighting and sound often seem to be engaged in their own jostling psychological dance, in which past and present shimmer and merge on a liberating journey into the light…”
“…the choreography, by Anna Williams, has the strong, clean lines of Scandinavian furniture, and its locking embraces are straightforwardly expressive of the parents’ mutual love. When the piece moves into more elegiac territory, however, Williams can’t find the language…”
Ben Yeoh writes (!):
“…An intimate form. However, whereas Bausch tends to be absurd, occasionally disjointed, more sudden, less steady in tempo – I am Falling is more continuous, more narrative, simpler, starker, more intimate….”
Lack of Asian work / Labute
Michael Billington claims “The rich mixture of work coming from British writers of African-Caribbean origin is not matched by those with Asian roots” in this GU blogpost. I wish he had come to see my YELLOW GENTLEMEN but hey that’s probably just me.
Neil Labute makes a call to write bravely about “important matters” and how US theatre may be losing its way.
“…my literary heroes – Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, David Hare, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. These playwrights, all of them British, not only spoke to me, but shook the very ground I walked on, the ideals I believed in…
…Theatre is not dying. We hear this every so often and have self-important conferences to defend this or that. Theatre is a resilient little shit of an art form that will go on long after any of us are around to worry about it. But it can get stuck, and I believe American theatre is currently in danger of this. I include myself…
…We are small writers in America these days, writing tiny plays about tiny ideas with two to four characters, so that we get produced and nobody loses any money. American playwrights have been workshopped and “staged-readinged” to death, and we are now a fearful bunch who add sitcom lines to our dramas and tie things up at the end so that folks can walk out of theatres smiling….
…Maybe every writer has a political play hidden away in a drawer somewhere, but my guess is that we’ve stopped writing them. Pilot scripts are a lot shorter and easier to hustle.Let’s face it, most writers are pussies. We sit back and watch the world go by, writing down the things we find funny or sad while trying to make a buck off it….
..audience… Let us know that if we are brave enough to write about the stuff that matters, then you’ll come and watch. I may never fight a battle, or run for office, or help an old lady across the street – but when I sit down and put pen to paper, I can promise to write about a subject of some importance, and to do so with honesty and courage. The time for fear and complacency is past. Bravery needs to make a comeback on both sides of the footlights, and fast.”
McMaster report: Supporting Excellence in the Arts
Sir Brain McMaster was asked by the Secretary of State:
• How the system of public sector support for the arts can encourage excellence, risk-taking and innovation;
• How artistic excellence can encourage wider and deeper engagement with the arts by audiences;
• How to establish a light touch and non-bureaucratic method to judge the quality of the arts in the future.
He has just published his report, which I think all arts boards and practioners interested in public funding (and of course the public funders who I am sure will read it) should read it. It is not without several controversies and I am undecided about many of the recommendations but it is a n excellent starting point for the debate.
Here are McMaster’s recommendations from the report and a link to Michael Billington’s comments:
… innovation and risk-taking be at the centre of the funding and assessment framework for every organisation, large or small.
… funding bodies and arts organisations prioritise excellent, diverse work that truly grows out of and represents the Britain of the 21st Century
… funding bodies and arts organisations act as the guardians of artists’ freedom of expression, and provide the appropriate support to deal with what can be a hostile reaction to their work.
… the Arts Council, the British Council and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport work together to investigate and implement an international strategy that stimulates greater international exchange, brings the best of world culture here and takes the best of our culture to the world.
… the board of every cultural organisation contains at least two artists and/or practitioners.
I recommend the setting up of a Knowledge Bank which could be called upon by boards to feed into and support the appointment process and to advise on potential candidates.
… all funding bodies have and take up the right to be involved in the appointment processes of the organisations they fund.
… cultural organisations be proactive in meeting the extra demand for their work that the ‘cultural offer’ will generate. They must ensure that the activity that makes up this offer is of the highest standard, reflecting the diversity and internationalism I highlight in this report.
… the cost of mentoring for senior appointments should be a standard feature of any recruitment budget.
…since cultural organisations have a vested interest in and responsibility for supporting and developing talent, they should be providing free or discounted tickets to aspiring practitioners.
… funding bodies explore the potential for international co-operation that allows young practitioners to see more work abroad.
… funding bodies, organisations and practitioners prioritise opportunities for continuing professional development throughout careers.
… practitioners take responsibility for the cultural ecology and actively engage with the development of their peers and the next generation.
… DCMS and the Arts Council work with HM Treasury towards a new scheme for the ten organisations with the most innovative ambition to receive ten year funding to further that ambition.
… funding bodies actively identify innovative ways for new talent to be identified and funded.
… to overcome the endemic ‘it’s not for me’ syndrome and building on the success of free admission to museums and galleries, for one week admission prices are removed from publicly funded organisations.
… practitioners communicating about their work be the primary tool of any programme of audience engagement.
… cultural organisations stop exploiting the tendency of many audiences to accept a superficial experience and foster a relationship founded on innovative, exciting and challenging work.
… the Public Service Broadcasting review examines the extent of the cultural provision provided by public service broadcasters.
… a new way forward be found that reclaims a strategic approach to touring, while exploiting the regional structures created by the Arts Council’s reorganisation.
… the touring of exhibitions is encouraged and implemented strategically.
… the funding bodies, jointly with representatives of cultural organisations, develop good-practice guidelines for self-assessment. These should focus primarily on the excellence of the art and commitment to innovation and risk-taking.
… to complement the culture of self-assessment, funding bodies institute a system of peer review. I suggest all regularly funded organisations should be reviewed by peers on a cyclical basis and that the process is managed by the funding body.
… funder intervention where organisations are failing, setting fixed conditions for funding or, in extremis, its removal entirely, and that this be acknowledged in funding agreements.
… funding decisions made by all funding bodies (DCMS, Arts Council, MLA) are based on professional judgements of what is and what is not excellent.
Picture Man / David Eldridge
Until next Sunday only
Neil decides he has been pushed too far by the uncaring and often callous behaviour he sees around him. But when he begins to intervene in incidents by taking pictures on his mobile phone, it has disastrous consequences.
Neil …… Martin Freeman
Janine …… Heather Craney
Hussein …… Emil Marwa
George …… Peter Marinker
Man on Tube …… Jake Harders
Polish Prostitute …… Ania Sowinkski
Freddie …… Bailey Pepper
Teenage Boy …… Joseph Tremain
Scrabble
I was a very young Scrabble fiend. I played competitive Scrabble when I was 7 to 10 years old and I still remember the indignation on a best of 3, scoring totals +/- wins, when my nearest rival pulled some unbelievable tiles to surpass me. I still have my second place trophy. Sad.
I just finished reading Word Freak by Stephen Fatsis and that has re-inspired me to play, particularly on Facebook. And I’m glad to know I didn’t grow up into the majority of characters in the world of competitive Scrabble. Or did I?
In any case, I believe with out this Scrabble interlude I probably would not have the same relantionship to words and writing as I do today.
Arts Council / British Coucil / Restructuring
Andy Field makes some interesting arguments for keeping the Arts Council.
There are many worth while companies being hit in this round and I am supporting the Bush amongst others. Having been through a similar mill with Talawa, I somewhat understand the fear, anger and disbelief at the process.
Andy seems to be making the point that there is a fixed pool of money, from which not everyone will get enough and that some older companies may have to make way for newer companies. Perhaps, not that controversial an assertion. Further, everyone seems to agrees the ACE process could be a lot better: transparency, communication, more peer review etc.
On the other hand, if you do take the logical extreme. ACE is doing a bad job therefore we the government / ACE board should “restructure it” –> what would the new structure look like?
Proposals please.
However, the British Council with different but perhaps aligned priorities has already restructured. This is what is proposed:
“After earlier in 2007 disbanding its advisory panels in the Arts, which were made up of volunteers, the executive board of the British Council has [in Dec 2007] decided to to get rid of its departments of film, drama, dance, literature, design, and the visual arts and instead organise its cultural staff into panels with the titles Progressive Facilitation, Market Intelligence Network, Knowledge Transfer Function and Modern Pioneer.”
That’s right
-Progressive Facilitation
-Market Intelligence Network
-Knowledge Transfer Function
-Modern Pioneer
What would people make of an ACE which would have to decide upon those functional lines?
Dance Theatre / I am Falling
In the UK, I do not think we have a culture of dance theatre. We have dance. Some of it has narrative. We have theatre. Some of it has dance and is physical.
Dance theatre suggests that in this form neither the dance nor the theatre have primacy. A balance.
When I hear dance theatre, I think of Tanztheater and I think of Wuppertal and Pina Bausch. I think it is perhaps a German form most of all, I guess you could say it is a cousin to expressionist dance.
I understand the language of modern dance poorly but can glimpse and be moved by them. So, really a few performances of Pina Bausch is all I have to draw upon in the world of dance theatre.
The Gate’s I am Falling (Carrie Cracknell directing, Anna Williams as choreographer and Garance Marneur as designer) has echoes of Bausch to me. An intimate form. However, whereas Bausch tends to be absurd, occasionally disjointed, more sudden, less steady in tempo – I am Falling is more continuous, more narrative, simpler, starker, more intimate.
The story is simple: the life, death and love of two parents seen partially from the point of view of the child who can not quite penetrate his parents relationship. The effort to find a dance form to tell that story adds layers of complexity and visceral feeling.
The dance and theatre are not equal at all times. Some times the dance dominates, some times the narrative. Occasionally, for me, I found the dance so mesmorising that I lost the threads of the story. Perhaps that means the dancing was ultimately more compelling. I’m not sure.
I did long for more micro-moments of stillness. The movements were like a constant stream and my mind would have liked a few more places where I could appreciate the tableux but that’ just me and perhaps the tapestery would have been weaker for it. I also wanted to see more feet. Perhaps, that’s just a fetish but dancers feet tell their own story and between audiences’ heads I lost that tale of feet.
It is an intense and intimate 40 minutes and if you go in with a mind to understand how dance and theatre can intertwine in their own pas de deux and be absorbed by it, you’ll like it. If you only like straightforward theatre and dance drives you crazy, this may not be for you. But go and see it anyway, it might be good for your soul.
PS Pina Bausch is coming to Sadler’s Wells this year and performing herself. Catch it while you can! This clip of Café Müller (seen also in Almovodar’s Talk to Her) is one of the most moving dance pieces I have seen.
Edward Bond interview
Interview between Michael Billington and Edward Bond.
Bond has been an influential playwright for many writers. I’ve not seen much of his work (as he is nor performed in the UK that much – more in Paris it seems) but read quite a bit and I think he is quite important.
“…There is a division in the Greeks,” says Bond, “between the social problem and the self problem that we have to resolve. You can’t have Orestes and Oedipus in the same play. You can’t have Antigone and Medea in the same play. One also has to recognise that, although the Greeks created the first western democracy, it was a democracy founded on slavery. But while acknowledging the power of the Greek dramatists, what we have to do is find a way of integrating the individual dilemma with the social problem. Even Shakespeare, for all his greatness, can’t always do that. You argue that Hamlet’s private dilemma is related to his political status as a usurped heir to the throne. But Shakespeare can only solve that by treating Hamlet as a sacrificial victim and bringing on Fortinbras. Today there are divisions in our own society, which is based on a kind of consumer totalitarianism. But we have to resolve them through the logic of imagination. In the end, that’s why I write.”
What is sad is that Bond’s attempts to deal with the big issues of our time go largely unseen in Britain. Paris has become his working home, where the Theatre National de la Colline is staging a five-play cycle addressing what Bond calls “the search for human freedom”…
Oh The Humanity, and other Exclamations; Will Eno
I’ve learnt a few things.
“ “Oh, the humanity” has become an American phrase, signifying expressions of strong emotion. The phrase is often used in a cynical way to decry exaggerated responses to minor tragedies” according to wiki.
It was, it seems, first used by the broadcaster of the time, Herbert Morrison to describe the Hindenburg disaster, when a Zeppelin burst into flames in the 1930s in New Jersey.
And thus Will Eno’s play collection – which is 5 loosely interlinked plays – is aptly named.
I was impressed by the actors: Brian Hutchinson and Marisa Tomei (there was a cameo for Drew Hildebrand too). I had seen Tomei before at the ART and had not been much moved by her then. I did discover this time that she could wear beautiful and very expensive looking high heels and walk very well in them and that she had a tattoo on her, I think, left foot. It looked like an Egyptian eye of Ra. No, I didn’t look that up. Right. I must have been distracted. I digress, the performances were very strong.
But, it was the play that was intriguing and I think did touch on the profound.
You could argue that the plays were slight. The title suggests and sums up the whole play. In each play a minor or a major tragedy (always major to some one) occurs and the characters try to make sense of the event with a mixture of the banal and deeply emotional.
However, even the banal was the type laced with the reactions we see in the media, around us and probably by us.
I’m sorry I hear that your father died.
Yes. Thanks.
I know how you must feel.
Thank you [what do you mean you know how I feel, how you can you know how I feel.]
[Not quotes - it was better written than that - from the play just a sense of the banl things I've heard people say in response to the sad.]
And so, the play juxtaposes these reactions. It places unhappy, unfortunate and down right tragic occurrences against our every day humanity. It asks the audience to consider its own response to these same or similar events (such as an airplane crash).
You might argue this is lazy and that the play with this premise is light.
But, in granting these characters an eloquence or occasional aphorism by creating them to mirror people, events and places we know, my sense is that the play suggests we are all deeply human and affected by tragic events in a way which does reflect our humanity even if most of the time we may not have the language to express it and certainly not the language in the public sphere rather than in the private sphere where much of the expression of tragedy and sadness occurs.
The small movement to touch the back of the hand of someone you care for.
Clearing away your dead father’s ties for the last time.
Wondering why you can’t find love.
I digress again. Large in premise but treated gently, a mix of aphorisms (“My love is like a sunset: stunning and then over”) and banalities it debates our humanity with ourselves and in the theatre.
Some will not bring this with them, and the piece requires the audience to complete the spaces and the subtext beneath the banal niceties, so I wouldn’t say this play was for everyone but I guess I left a little different to how I entered the theatre, which is one of the things I aim for.
New York / Troubled Blog
I’ve been in New York and having touble with the blog. It’s something to do with php and firefox. Anyways…
I saw only one piece of theatre in New York (apart from the theatre of the actual city) Oh the Humanity and other exclamations by Will Eno whose Thom Pain (based on nothing) was also well lauded and came to London.
Anyone else had a firefox / php / word press blog issue let me know…
Katie Mitchell’s process
“…A turning point came in 1999, when she began to study with Tatiana Olear, an actress who had trained under Dodin, and with Elen Bowman, whose own training came in a direct line from Stanislavsky.This translates into a very particular modus operandi. With every text that she works on, she reads it first (with the cast) for things that are “facts, non-negotiable facts: it is Russia; there is Moscow; Arkadina married Gavril Treplev”. Then, “all the grey areas you put down as a list of questions. You have to be aware that you might have affinities that might take you in subjective directions.” The process at this point is diagnostic, almost scientific, rather than interpretative, she says. Mitchell and her cast will do exhaustive research, building the histories of the characters and studying the background to the text and writer. The point is to avoid “over-subjective, therapeutic connections”, to produce a “cool, steady analysis” that will lead to an understanding of the “machine of the text” and its main ideas. The key themes of Women of Troy, she says, are “war, family, collapse of moral certainty and death. Lovely themes!”
Next comes interpretation: “It’s like adjusting or fine-tuning on a complex machine. You can never turn off the volume on one of the ideas of the play, but you can adjust it; for instance, I might lower the volume of ‘family’ in the articulation of this play today. It is confusing that people have a picture of me smashing things up for the sake of it. That isn’t the case. The first step I take is careful consideration and detailed study of the material, then I work out how to communicate it now.”
Because of the specificity of her process, Mitchell tends to work with the same core of collaborators. “It will normally take one performance for an actor to use the process efficiently,” she says….”
From a Guardian interview with Charlotte Higgins
De Jongh has written a play, Finborough to stage
Nicholas De Jongh, currently Evening Standard Theatre critic has written a play to be staged in Feb 2008 at the Finborough. I wonder what all the other critics will make of it?
Plague over England
“In Autumn 1953, Sir John Gielgud, then at the height of his fame as an actor, was arrested in a Chelsea public lavatory. He pleaded guilty the following morning to the charge of persistently importuning men for immoral purposes. Poised to appear in the West End in a play he was directing and recently knighted, his conviction caused a national sensation – breaking the great taboo of public discussion of homosexuality.
More than just a dramatisation of a scandalous event in one actor’s life, this new play shows how Gielgud’s arrest played a small but distinct part in the battle to make homosexuality legal.
As a companion piece, the Finborough Theatre will present the play Gielgud was performing when he was arrested – A Day by the Sea by N.C. Hunter – for five Sunday and Monday performances in April.“
We are all Rwandans
My friend, Debs Paterson-Gardner co-write and directed a short film in Rwanda. I went to see it at its first screening last night. It is very good. I’m not sure where it goes from here but do look out for it.
We are all Rwandans. The story is:
In 1997, three years after the Rwandan genocide, a large refugee camp was disbanded over the border between Rwanda and Zaire (now the Congo), causing a mass repatriation of genocide refugees and rebels back into Rwanda.
A group of rebels bent on destabilizing the new government infiltrated the north, an area called Kibuye, and carried out massacres, mostly against Tutsis.
On the night of 18th March 1997 they raided Nyange Secondary school in the North West of the country. The rebels surrounded the school dining hall and classes when all students were doing their night studies. Students in class 6 were made to lie down and asked to separate themselves into two groups: Hutu and Tutsi.
They refused.
This is the story of those students – whose refusal to separate cost many of them their lives…
Production blog and website.
Wicked
I recently went to see Wicked. I enjoyed it. I don’t go to musicals that much. I seem to forget how much dancing there is. All the performers are skilled and it is impressive seeing them move, sing, dance and act their way through at full pelt with seldom a dull moment.
A friend of mine was playing one of the leads and he is normally in the ensemble but is understudy and it was great to him see have his chance to shine.
From a structural point of view, I found it interesting to note it used a type fo “circular” structure. Like the Titanic film.
This seems to be used particularly well when the audience are likely to know the story well.
We all know the Titantic sinks, so you can not easily build suspense up to that conclusion. Instead, you start with the conclusion, explain how you arrive at the conclusion and then add a little twist slightly beyond the conclusion to give the story a different and satisfactory ending.
A “circular with a tail” dramaturgical structure.
In Wicked, we all know the Wicked Witch dies in the Wizard of Oz, so 98% of Wicked tells you the story of how the Wicked Witch gets to the point we all know and the play starts just after the Witch’s death and then goes back in time but ends up finishing a little time after her death with new revelations (if you want to know what, go and see the play – different to the book ending).
Free Rice
Quite fun vocabulary game which also means advertisers donate a little bit of rice.
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The blurb: FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site….
Spaced, series 3, Simon Pegg: an ending?
I was a Spaced virgin until last weekend. I sat amongst loyal Spaced fans at the NFT to watch both series 1 and 2 back to back. Only interrupted by quick loos breaks, snatched red wine, chip butty sandwiches; and a Q&A with most of the cast and director.
In the Q&A it was asked: OK, there’s no series 3 but where would the characters be now? Where would they have ended up…?
Don’t read further if you don’t want Simon Pegg’s view
Simon Pegg, co-writer and one of the lead characters (Tim) commented about where the characters may possibly have gone in the end. No series 3… but from his writer’s point of view he thought:
Mike Watt eventually moves out and joins Dexter somewhere in south London – just because his best mate Nick Frost has actually moved to south London is not necessarily a read through…
Brian Todd does one day end up back with Twist but his art is generally not a success during his lifetime. But when Brian dies he is recognised as a genius and his work sells for millions which it never did when he was alive.
One day… Daisy and Tim realise… and they have one of those moments… one of those fragments of time which makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck… a kiss… but a kiss that seems to end all screen kisses… bringing together a moment which should always have been… in the greatest kiss there ever was – a realisation that they were in love with each other. (I paraphrase, Simon said something like that though)
Simon said if the series had continued he would have liked to have given watchers a moment like that.
It reminds me of how William Goldman described the kiss between Buttercup and Wesley in the Princess Bride.
So for all you Spaced fans who might want to speculate on where the charcters end up this is one possibility…
Medea in ancient Greek
In a very late response (I’ve been out of the country and squashed by an increasing plethora of things-to-do) to Stephen Sharkey‘s question on Medea in ancient Greek, I enjoyed it immensely.
I have the advantange of having seen a few Ancient Greeks plays now.
One crucial experience that you miss in English is the poetry and musicality of the ancient Greek. It is far closer to song than it is to speech. Perhaps in some ways it is akin to a musical theatre form (!)
One advantage is the timelessness of the story. The Greeks knew the story and the ending and so do we, so the actual exact meaning of any sentence is perhaps not so important as it would be for a new play.
In that sense, Faust, Romeo and Juliet, Greek tragedy and the Titanic all have that in common. You know what is going to happen: the ship hits the iceberg. So, you do not have to worry about the story in the same way as for most new plays. [This from a structural point of view is an important difference between Punchdrunk's Faust and Masque of the Red Death.] This is also a structural difference often between some musicals eg West Side Story, Dirty Dancing and a new play. The audience that goes to Dirty Dancing knows the story.
Medea is well-known but for those who do not quite know the details the ending may be problematic. Medea is taken away in a chariot. It is a “God intervenees” moment.
For a modern audience this can be somewhat disatisfying as we find it harder to believe in such events. However, I thought this was resolved well by the use of a helicopter in the play but I know some in the audience found this confusing but I think it is probably a structural feature of the original story. Medea is plucked away by her God relatives.
The actual performances were brilliant. My one potentially critical thought was compared to previous years, I thought the chorus in this version of Medea were not as coherent or as musical. There is a quality very beguiling, sonorous and beautiful when I have heard the chorus chant/sing in unison or with an aspect of chorus character.
The power of Medea particularly shines through. A woman so wronged that she would kill her children in an act of revenge. I would put the performance on a par with Fiona Shaw’s. My viewing of Shaw’s performance was equally powerful but I felt Shaw in places manipulated the audience into laughing or gasping, where as Marta Zlatic used the power fo the language and obvious desperation of intention to draw you into Medea’s version of events.
The direction was inventive and strong as ever but perhaps not as fluid as the previous Greek play mainly due to more static nature of the chorus and less musical choice of delivery but perhaps it suited the play more.
All in all, a brilliant show to see. Perhaps it feels like a Russian only-speaker knowing Shakespeare’s play but only in Russian going to the Globe to hear them in English for the first time. An experience worth going for.
Stephen Fry blog
Stephen Fry has a blog.
He also seems to like many things tech and gadgety. Not sure why but I didn’t take him for having techno geek qualities.
If you see his taxi in America and take a picture, it may win you a prize. He is travelling round all the US states in it….
Arts funding, writing to your MP
Quite recently I wrote to my MP. I used www.writetothem.com. A great, non-profit service (incidentally one of my friends, in my school class, was a founding force for this but very sadly he died recently) that helps to ensure your MP works for you, and you know what they are doing.
This is part of her reply:
“Investment in the arts is one of the signs of a civilised society.
Spending on the arts increased hugely in the early part of this decade,
quite rightly, and we have many things to show for it (numbers
attending free museums and galleries, for example). Of course we should
campaign to maintain high levels of spending, because public pressure
matters. However, this has to be set in a broader context. There are
huge demands on public spending- housing, schools, the NHS, the rising
pensions bills, the fact that we are still only getting on for halfway
towards our target to end child poverty and so forth, whilst there also
remains a powerful political lobby for tax cuts and reduced public
spending. I am more than happy to continue to lobby for more money, but
not at the expense of other essential areas of public spending.”
to my questioning / lobbying on arts funding levels. I’ve never lobbied for anything before.
I know much bigger fish than me lobbied direct to Gordon Brown et al and this week we have heard in the pre-budget report that Chancellor, Alistair Darling confirmed this week that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s allotment would increase from £1.68 billion to £2.21 billion in 2010/11, a settlement which he said “guarantees an inflation increase for the arts”.
So the result: a 2.7% inflation level increase in DCMS funding, which the government has guaranteed will be passed onto the arts.
Tony Hall (Royal Opera House) described the settlement as “the best result we could have won”, while National Campaign for the Arts director Louise de Winter said the funding package was “very good news”. She told The Stage: “We’d like to think that we made a strong case for arts funding and thankfully government has listened. There is still one small fly in the ointment though – the relief is slightly tempered by the Olympics issue – what the arts are still missing is the £137 million which was diverted to the Olympics.”
Lyn Gardner is more guarded. She is not cracking open the champagne. She identifies a point that I wrote to my MP about. She writes
While we are about it, let’s remember that the money that the government gives to the arts is not a handout but an investment. The arts gives more back to the economy than it takes in subsidies, but what cannot be measured is what it gives back in nurturing the imaginative health and well-being of the nation.
And I wrote to my MP:
On arts spending, obviously there are other pressures such as housing,
schools etc, but part of the problem is that the benefit of the arts
by its very nature is “intangible” it can not truly be measured by
attendance of galleries. One of the theoretical reasons, humans are
quite so bad at looking after the environment is the fact the tangible
cost/benefit is very hard to measure in monetary terms for the
environment – what price the ecosystem of a forest? As a theatre
writer amongst other things, I don’t think a civilised society could
put the arts above, for instance, child poverty but without the arts
and the ability to explore what it means to be human – a measure that
can not be measured in GDP, life expectancy or waiting lists – then
our children will remain poor in other important ways too. I would ask
you to bear in mind the intangible nature of this investment and the
fact that we may very well not have that much tangible to show for it.
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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