Birmingham Rep Hits the Jackpot!
The Birmingham Rep has just been granted £5.7m in stabilisation funding from ACE. The cash will be fed into the company over a three-year period and will enable it to develop as many as ten shows a year, and go on tour both in the UK and abroad. New writing, community and education work and a wider programme of theatre for young audiences are all now on the cards.
Tara, which is the centre for Asian Theatre in Britain, receives £605,000, which the company hopes will enable it to extablish a new permanent base, whilst WYP gets £591,000, which will clear its loan from Leeds Council.
In its report for the year 1996 - 1997, ACE predicts that "squeezing" by the Treasury will inevitably lead to it having to be more selective about which companies it supports. This will be exacerbated, chairman Lord Gowrie says, by the reduction in income from the Lottery brought about by the introduction of a sixth "good cause". There is not, he goes on, enough to fund new Lottery schemes, and he pointed to the fact that A4E was heavily oversubscribed.
In the past four years, he said, actual grants made by ACE had fallen by £20m in real terms, and there is no doubt that that pattern will continue.
ACE can be found at www.artscouncil.org.uk, but they have not yet got the Annual Report online.
Equity has introduced a new membership scheme for students, who are on accredited courses in Dance and Drama. For £10 they can join the Union, receive publications and attend meetings. They will not, however, be able to vote.
Whom Trust Has Joined Together....
Two Edinburgh theatres, the Edinburgh Festival Theatre and the King's Theatre, have joined together to form a new Trust, Edinburgh Theatres Ltd. The new company begins operations in April of next year, but will continue to work separately until then.
Equity has issued the following instruction to all members:
Members are INSTRUCTED not to accept any offer of engagement made on or after Friday 26 September in any capacity - Featured Visual Artist, Voice-Over, Out-of-Vision Singer, Stunt Artist, Walk-On or Background Artist - for any television commercial made for use in the UK; test commercial; pilot commercial or sponsorship promotion. Members are further INSTRUCTED not to grant consent to the re-use on UK television of any television commercial made under a contract which has subsequently expired and explicitly to exclude consent to any sue of a foreign commercial on UK television.This is in pursuit of a disagreement over terms.
The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, and the Advertising Film and Videotape Producers Association have responded with a full-page ad in The Stage.
Snippets
Rent is expected to open at the Shaftesbury on 12th May 1998.
Damn Yankees has been cancelled.
Private Lives, due at the National in November, has been postponed.
The Herbal Bed at the Duchess and Pygmalion at the Albery will both close on 4th October.
In Nomine Amoris (In the Name of Love) by Dina and Rosabella Gregory, 21-year old twins, is the winner of the 1997 Vivien Ellis Musical Theatre Prize.
Jim Dale is to play Fagin in Oliver from 3rd November until it closes on 21st February.