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A Report Which All Will Welcome
Dateline: 27th March, 2005
It has to be admitted that, as a general rule, the Reports of House
of Commons Select Committees do not make for light reading. The latest
from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which was published on
23rd March and which can be downloaded
from the UK Parliament Site and which we summarise
this week, is no exception, but it is a little more readable than most,
perhaps because of some of the more barbed comments which is makes.
Comments such as
We were dismayed that the West End did not come to the table with
more detailed proposals for how the money would be handled in an appropriate,
transparent and accountable manner
and
If a local village hall children’s playgroup has to go through
the full process for a Lottery award, why should the renovation of
large commercial theatres be treated any less rigorously?
or
(Referring to agency fees on tickets) He told us that “we have
not yet discovered, as an industry, …the way not to wash that
dirty linen in public.” Obviously not.
and, on the same matter, "this blatant rip-off ", or, on
the matter of actors' wages
it is a scandal that one of the nation’s key cultural activities
is in such a state that, at least in part, it relies on professional
performers and technicians to pay such a high price by earning such
low wages
and others of similar ilk help make it more than usually readable.
Do we detect the caustic wit of the Committee's chair Sir Gerald Kaufman
in these comments?
The theatre world at large will welcome the Report, although the commercial
sector (especially West End) perhaps less than the subsidised. It does
a number of very important things:
- it reaffirms the value of public subsidy of theatre, not only in
financial terms but also in terms of the cultural value to the UK;
- it demands that the DCMS restore the £34m its stand-still
three year funding strategy takes away from ACE;
- it urges that funding be allocated to the maintenance of theatre
buildings, including those in the amateur sector;
- it emphasises the value of drama in education and of youth theatre,
and demands that youth theatre be protected from cuts;
- it warns against a return to stop-start funding;
- it demands that the arts remain one of the National Lottery "good
causes";
- it suggests that any public subsidy for the maintenance of theatres
in the West End should come from Heritage sources and not ACE;
- it says that commercial theatres which wish for public subsidy should
(a) go through the same process as any other sector applying for funding,
and (b) offer something to the public in return;
- it recognises the importance of new writing and the need for it
to be subsidised;
- it urges higher wages for actors and backstage staff; and
- it demands that ACE should apply success criteria more rigorously
to the clients it funds.
In other words, it speaks a lot of sense! It is a Report that the whole
theatre world will welcome, although perhaps the West End will not be
as pleased as the public sector.
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