Andrew Manly, chief executive and artistic director of the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, has been sacked after appearing on-stage after a performance and lambasting the theatre's board for its plans. He and almost all of the theatre's fifty staff had received notice of possible redundancy two weeks before.
The theatre's audience has fallen from 81% in 1997 to 38% this season and has an expected deficit of around £190,000. As a result, in-house productions will cease, there will be nothing but amateur productions until May, and then the theare will go dark until next year when it is planned to re-open it as a receiving house.
Change NESTA radically, Smith advised
The Council for the Advancement of Arts, Recreation and Education (CAARE) has called upon Culture Secretary Chris Smith to change the organisation's remit to "arts for all" and "sports for all", and to alter Lottery rules so that it will receive an extra £200m a year.
The Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts has changed its name. Its new name, Arts and Business, has been chosen to reflect a wider relationship between the two.
The Fringe programme at Edinburgh's Assembly Rooms is under threat after the City Council demanded that artistic director William Burdett-Coutts pay £66,000 in unpaid debt by 25th March or the programme for this year would be put out to tender. Burdett-Coutts claims that the moeny is not available now and has offered to repay over five years.
This year's rent has been set at £41,000, which is a reduction on last year. The rent actually rose over the last few years from £30,000 to £65,000 for 44 days. Even if Burdett-Coutts pays of the debt and the rent for this year, the Council intends to put out the 2000 festival to tender at a rent of £140,000.
Burdett-Coutts has run the Fringe programme at the venue since 1981.
Cameron Mackintosh has new plans for London
Two new productions have been pencilled in for London by the Cameron Mackintosh organisation, The Witches of Eastwick and Just So.
Mackintosh is to close his Australian office and concentrate on the US, aiming to mount productions of Putting It Together, Martin Guerre and Oliver!