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Dateline:
12th September, 2004
Boyden Reports on Wales
Peter Boyden, whose report on regional theatre in England led to increased
fuding for struggling theatres, has now, at the invitation of the Arts
Council of Wales, turned his attention to the state of English Language
Theatre in Wales. His report, which makes deprerssing reading, has now
been published by ACW as a consultation document.
His conclusions are:
- A vibrant theatre culture has a dynamic contemporary relevance for
any engaged society by celebrating collective identity, strengthening
social purpose, providing a public forum for ideas, harnessing creativity,
feeding energy and talent into the creative industries, and enhancing
international perceptions of that society.
- Compared with other art forms the theatre culture in Wales has been
weak. Over the last five years ACW – with the support of the
Assembly Government – has made additional resources available
to establish a national theatre company in the Welsh language and
to put Young People’s Theatre on a firm footing. English language
theatre in Wales has not seen comparable increases in core or project
funding.
- In the English language the range and volume of professional ELT
production has dropped alarmingly – especially at the small-scale.
Opportunities for Welsh creative talent have declined proportionately.
Audiences have dwindled.
- The three building-based producing theatres – Clwyd Theatr
Cymru in Mold, the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff and Torch Theatre at
Milford Haven - lack the resources either to meet the resulting demand
or to optimise their existing capacity to produce.
- There is no large scale producing theatre for adults in the whole
of the south Wales urban belt that encompasses two-thirds of the Welsh
population.
- English language theatre in Wales is characterised by low levels
of investment, a weak professional infrastructure, low levels of output
and unsatisfied demand for indigenous theatre from presenting venues
and audiences.
- The last two decades have seen a steady drift of talent to work
in theatre elsewhere or to leave the sector altogether. Of the graduates
from the acting course at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
in 2003 only 17% found their first professional work in Wales. There
is a debilitating assumption that talent must leave Wales to achieve
its potential.
- New writing talent continues to emerge but struggles for exposure.
- English language theatre in Wales urgently needs a strategic vision
backed by increased resources. The vision needs to embrace production
infrastructure, venues, audiences, and the professional development
of creative talent.
- No such vision will be achievable without a programme of incremental
investment in pursuit of agreed objectives. A failure to invest may
undermine the existing infrastructure to the point at which even the
current low level of production becomes unsustainable.
He makes a range of proposals, covering the production infrastructure,
the venue base and audience development, the professional development
of theatre practitioners, and how his proposals should be delivered.
These proposals are based on the following principles:
- Investment should maximise the production capacity of the existing
infrastructure and production companies
- Change-management support should be a “quid pro quo” for
enhanced funding
- New funding must also introduce new components and open new opportunities
- The impact of investment should be felt in all parts of the country
- Resources should be applied across all scales of theatre activity
- Investment should trigger and respond to artistic leadership and
nurture creative energy
- The significance of scale and critical mass should be acknowledged
- better to have fewer properly resourced initiatives than to spread
investment too thinly
- All sources of investment should support the same strategic objectives
The full report can be downloaded
from the ACW as a PDF file.
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