Clwyd Theatr Cymru has been told by Flintshire Councty Council that it must clear its £800,000 debt in the next four years to meet the authority's budgetary plans. As a result the company is to be restructured and redundancy notices are to be issued, some compulsory. It is thought that at least twelve jobs will go.
At the same time as the crisis was revealed, it was announced that general manager Sarah Holmes is to leave the company to take up the post of executive director at Ipswich's Wolsey Theatre. There are rumours that director Terry Hands may be the next to go.
The Arts Council have given the Royal Shakespeare Company a Lottery grant of £755,000 towards the £3.3m needed for a feasability study into the proposed modernisation of the company's theatres and workshops in Stratford.
Charlotte Jones, who has been acting director of the Independent Theatre Council since Nicola Thorold moved the become head of drama at ACE, has been formally appointed to the position with immediate effect.
The Independent Television Commission has attacked ITV's arts programming, describing its arts policy as being "muddled and lacking in forethought" and that entertainment programmes (such as the MTV Awards) were masquerading as arts output. It broadly praised the channel's drama output but said that much of its comedy was not of a high enough standard and that its series relied too much on "the familiar territory of prison and hospital".
The national Theatre's production of The Merchant of venice, starring Henry Goodman, is to be filmed this month and is due to be broadcast on BBC2 in April of next year.
Paul Elliott has resigned from E&B Productions, the company he founded 36 years ago, just eighteen months after its takeover by Qdos Entertainment. He gave "a difference in manaement style" as his reason for quitting.
Under the terms of his contract with Qdos, he will not be allowed produce a pantomime until autumn 2003. As well as producing other shows, E&B has been Britain's biggest pantomime producer for many years, producing, at its peak, a staggering thirty pantos a year.