Kenneth Branagh will not being doing any live theatre work for the foreseeable future, he told critic Michael Billington in an interview, because it is too expensive for the majority of people.
"I find it frustrating that it costs so much to go and is available to a reliatively small number of people," he said.
He still enjoys live theatre and would love to tour. For the moment, however, he has dedicated himself to attempting to create the same kind of company feeling that one gets in theatre in film, in the hope that "the whole movie will have that theatrical quality".
Branagh hopes to begin shooting a film version of Macbeth later this year.
Ex-Edinburgh Fringe director Hilary Strong is to be executive director of the Greenwich Theatre, which was re-opened earier this year with a doubled grant from the Greenwich council. The council has guaranteed the £200,000 annual grant for the next two years.
Strong has been appointed on a three-year contract.
Wendy Andrews has been appointed Director of Communications at ACE, replacing Phil Murphy who left in January to work for the Labout Party. Andrews takes up the post next week, just when the expected ACE job losses will be announced.
The Arts Council of Wales will have less money to give to the arts in the future, because of a reduction in the amount of Lottery cash it is to receive. The latest awards from ACW sees grants worth £1.7m going to 77 groups.
The Scottish Arts Council has announced the first Scotland on Stage grants, which are intended to fund individual shows rather than companies. There are thirteen grants, totalling £400,000, 35% of them for children's projects. Amng the grants are £13,000 for the New Communicado Theatre Company to develop the script of Brave, and £42,000 for the Glasgow Citizens to produce Coward's Cavalcade which will tour England.
The Arts Concil of England is past its sell-by date and must go, actress Miriam Karlin told the Equity Conference at the Trades Union Congress last week. "It isn't funny any more," she said. "Our regional theatres are dying."
She attacked ACE for spending millions on salaries, consultations and "ludicrous schemes", and for taking funding decision-making out of the hands of creative people.