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Here's Another Fine Mess You've Got Us Into!

Dateline: 6th February, 2000

No matter how experienced or sophisticated we become, lurking in the depths of our subconscious there's always the naive belief that a new year brings with it improvement and change. That belief is even stronger when we enter a new century. And as for entering a new millenium... well, everything has to get better, doesn't it?

Just five weeks into our new year/century/millenium, bitter experience reminds us just how naive such a belief is!

The Welsh Experience

Take the Arts Council of Wales (Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru): on 21st January 1999 it announced its new Drama strategy which resulted in uproar from all sides. Nothing daunted, it forged ahead and announced a total revamp of the young people's theatre and TIE area, cutting the number of companies and farming out the YPT/TIE coverage on a geographical basis. It was clear that three companies would have to close in April 2000, whilst five others would be expanding their operations and their staff.

Then on 19th January, 2000, ACW made a U-turn and told all the eight original companies that they will be funded after all. But if there was not the money to fund eight companies before, where is it coming from now? There has been no sudden influx of extra funds into ACW.

In a BBC interview, Sybil Crouch of ACW said that the organisation had "suffered a great deal of criticism". Playwright Dic Edwards, who works with Spectacle Theatre, was incensed by this, as he made clear in an open letter to ACW on 22nd January:

I was driven to despair when I heard Sybil Crouch on BBC Radio say that the Arts Council had suffered criticism for their decision! What use of language is this? "Suffered!" It's a use only those morally deadened by instutionalism could engage in. People who've become cavalier because of the security they in their unelected, unaccountable posts enjoy. I'll tell you where the real suffering is in all this, Sybil.

Over the last year, I have watched (at first hand in Spectacle's office and been aware of others elsewhere), as some of the best minds and talents in the Theatre in Wales have been humiliated, obliged to take part in an exercise which they knew would mean the end of three fellow companies, in order to save their own. Appeals against this policy were made but they fell on deaf ears. I saw real suffering. Uncountable hours devoted to getting the wording right on application forms because failure would spell the end. Out of work. I saw confusion: a sense of taking part in a kind of treachery and having no option but to take part. I saw old colleagues falling out, accusations flying around in an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion. I saw the TIE movement in Wales - the strongest in Britain and perhaps globally - fracture. I saw the soul of Welsh Theatre culture wrung out like an old shirt. Everywhere agony, suffering and frustration. Even the elation that came with being told that you'd succeeded in your application was tempered by the feelings of guilt. And then….IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING! That's what I call suffering. But it's even worse! That suffering has been caused by those whose very existence at a professional level, is to serve and facilitate the smooth and fair operation of the culture within which these Companies work.

Spectacle has been told that ACW will stick by its commitment to provide the additional funding it promised. However, nothing has been said to other companies, nor has ACW revealed where it will get the money from.

Cwmni Fran Wen was one of the other winners. Now it looks like its funding will be cut in half, so the work it had planned will have to be scrapped.

Now let us listen to the Writers' Guild of Great Britain:

For the last year we have been told by ACW officials that the drama strategy could not be suspended as its success depended upon the implementation of all its parts. However, since ACW have quite rightly backtracked on so many elements of the drama strategy, we feel the proper and right course of action now is to admit they've been wrong, and construct a policy which supports Welsh writers and promotes home-grown work.

Let's leave any comment on this bureaucratic nonsense until after we've looked at The English Experience

Articles Indices:

Articles from 2002
Articles from 2001
Articles from 2000
Articles from 1999
Articles from 1998
Articles from 1997

©Peter Lathan 2001