Share your unpopular opinions here!

Jun 14, 2016 18:12:58 GMT @cardinalpirelli said:

Other countries have their dross but it is what travels that matters, McBurney, Mitchell, Donnellan, Rice and Goold (the last less so, apart from across the Atlantic) are our standard bearers. Respectively influenced by Lecoq, Bausch, Dodin, Staniewski and Lepage they have enriched our theatre and have become important exports for our theatre as much as the writers above. Without their international (and mostly European) influences British theatre production would be, as I stated, weaker and more parochial.

It is what travels that matters. We get the best of foreign theatre, but it stops being foreign because it’s theatre. It’s live. It’s now. It’s here. I see foreign films, which are documents of foreign lives filmed elsewhere; I don’t see foreign theatre, because how can what’s happening within touching distance of me be foreign? So much travels to London – you mention Lepage, and you’ll be well aware that he’s here in a month’s time! We’re not years behind when we’re so receptive to the progressive present around the world. I don’t know what it’s like in Amsterdam or Berlin or Paris and whether the cultural exchange is equal there, but right now in London we get the best of European theatre – yeah, I’m jealous that I don’t see Complicite’s Beware of Pity or Toneelgroep’s Husbands and Wives, and after The Forbidden Zone I did expect more live streams, but we still get a lot, and it says a lot about the cultural of conversation we're in that Complicite are an English company premiering in Berlin and Husbands and Sons is an Australian/Dutch production of an American text. I don’t care if Europe is doing regietheater better than us, because I get the chance to see regietheater thanks to wonderful programming at the Barbican, now at the Young Vic, potentially at the new NT, a little at the BAC... As a theatregoer, not a theatremaker, I do feel London’s the greatest theatrical city in the world, not just for the theatre it makes, but for the theatre it takes in.

And on top of that, because we currently have a culture of cultural exchanges, of overseas talents coming here and English talents invading elsewhere, the only possible end result is a broader badinage of ideas and ideals, a larger pool of influences from which developing talents can steal, a greater exchange of philosophies of what theatre can be which promising but unmoulded minds can learn about and pick and choose from as they please. Paradoxically, I don’t think there’s a distinction between European and English theatre, but I clearly think there are massive cultural differences; what’s exciting about this is that we live at a moment where the communication’s great across Europe.  Ideas from one culture will permeate another, or flat out play on their theatres full stop.  How wonderful! As you say, without European influence English theatre would be far more parochial and far weaker, but (asking out of curiosity and ignorance) has there ever been a time with so many platforms, ever increasing, for international influence to make their mark in the UK?  In another lifetime, young groups would have to learn from drama school, reading up, expensive travel and guesswork, but today young groups (I’d love to know which ones you’d single out, Cardinal) get to see so much as cultural theatre goes! It’s not a competition, it’s a dialogue, and never has the dialogue been more egalitarian.

I used to live in grotty digs at the Barbican. The theatre that took place five minutes from my front door was my theatre. That might be the RSC and Benedict Cumberbatch, or it might be Theatre De La Ville and Robert Wilson. That's what English theatre is to me - Theatre De La Ville and Robert Wilson.  I'm a bit romantic here (or racist and stealing other cultures as my own), but sod it, we get wonderful work on our stages, and as far as I'm concerned when it's on our stages it's ours. I think we are behind in some fields of theatre, but ahead in others, but I don’t see that as an issue when tonight I can see Isabelle Huppert on one stage, a Greek company on another, Goold at the Almeida, Macmillan at the Wyndhams, The Flick at the National – and dare I say, where I can see Marianne Elliot, Phyllida Lloyd, John Tiffany and Julie Taymor in the West End too. It’s like being a kid in a candy store – it’s all there! And I’d fly the flag again for a) our talents like Longhurst and Elliot and McIntyre who deserve greater praise, and b) the shift in taste that’s made Young Vic, Almeida and Headlong transfers populist – I think it’s a wonderful time to be in London.

That went on a bit. I really only had one small point, that we’re lucky to get so much foreign theatre, that there’s a dialogue starting/continuing that can only be a progressive and good thing, and that I don’t like distinctions between here and there because I do think they don’t exist, and ultimately no-one’s years behind of anything, variety’s a great thing and what variety we have! It just turns out I love London. It’s easy to forget that sometimes, but blimey we’re lucky buggers!

THat's my unpopular opinion.  London theatre isn't London theatre - it's mostly London theatre (much of which is populist, much of which is crap), but it's also Regional, Celtic, European, American, Global, and only moving in a direction of breadth.  London is the greatest theatrical town (and thus the greatest town, what's more important than theatre?) in the world.