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Unsung Heroes?Dateline: 11th April, 2004We all know that there are two kinds of theatre: the commercial and the subsidised. Like any other business, all theatres have staff handling day-to-day administration, accounts, marketing and publicity, and so on. In the commercial theatre, the staff - admin and creative - are responsible ultimately to the board of directors and through them to the shareholders, but what about the subsidised theatre? Ultimately they are responsible to the funding bodies - the equivalent of the shareholders - but surely there must be an equivalent of the commercial enterprise's board of directors? And so there is. Most subsidised theatres are charities and companies limited by guarantee. The latter are companies which have limited liability but instead of having shareholders, they have a board of directors who each guarantee to pay a certain amount of money if the company goes into liquidation. This sum is usually £1. This may seem unfair on the company's creditors but, on the other hand, the directors do not benefit financially from their positions, unlike shareholders who are entitled to a share in its profits. As a charity, a subsidised theatre will have a board of trustees (which will also be the board of directors). Under the rules of the Charity Commission, these trustees are not allowed to benefit from their positions. Strictly speaking they should not even get free tickets for the shows! Each year the theatre must make a return to the Charity Commissioners setting out what benefits trustees have received during the year: these would normally be expenses incurred in carrying out their function, but the amounts are closely monitored. Basically trustees are volunteers who receive nothing for the work they do. On the other hand, they have the responsibility of setting policy and overseeing the work of the paid staff. Some senior paid staff will, of course, attend board meetings, but they do not have a vote, although obviously they can make recommendations which the trustees - if they are sensible! - will listen to. What surprised me - innocent as I was! - when I was invited to join the trust of a local theatre, was the fact that there was only one other person on the board who was actually involved in theatre professionally. The rest were lawyers, accountants, local authority representatives and marketing types. Really, I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the job of the trustees is to oversee the work of the paid staff, so a trust needs accountants, lawyers and so on, as well as people with theatre expertise and experience. I can look at a proposed programme and assess it from an artistic point of view, but without the help of my accountant colleagues, I most certainly could not understand the management accounts we are presented with each month, much less spot problems before they become serious. Nor, without the help of the lawyers, could I appreciate legal problems which we might face. On the other hand, without me and my theatre colleague, they could make decisions which might be good financially or legally but disastrous artistically. All are needed. They play a vital role in the running of our theatres, but how many ordinary theatregoers realise just how much the success of their local theatre depends upon the unpaid work of people who would seem, at first sight, to be totally the wrong people to be running them? I suspect that there are very few who even realise that the trustees exist, let alone give up hours of their time every month to make sure that the theatre delivers what they, the audience, enjoys so much. Truly they - especially the non-theatrical trustees - are the unsung heroes of theatre! Articles Indices:
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