“Is British Theatre Guilty of Failing the Working Class.”

I'm working class scum, brought up in a council house by a single parent and I don't want to see a reflection of my life on stage - theatre like cinema is escapism. Give me a musical like Wicked any day of the week over working class toot like Blood Brothers and similarly I'd rather see Noel Coward plays than the kitchen sink stuff.

But that's just me, maybe the posh folk want to see squalor as an escape from their buckets of gold.

100%
For me, one of the reasons both Preacherman and Wonderland failed catastrophically was their 'working class' leads.

Oh I just love watching working class dramas. I rarely understand a word they say but all that having a toilet outside, wearing vests and doing their own housework is such fun, it's like another universe. I especially like it when someone wears a flat cap. It's just smashing.

I found it all just a bit patronising.

What is the obsession within certain quarters about 'the working class'? It is almost a fetishisation of a group. A group that is never really defined, a group that does not seem to be asked what it wants - as if 'the working class' could come up with a single response that was acceptable to everyone within that group that doesn't really exist as a homogenised entity.

Yes, our theatre should reflect the whole range of life experience. Yes, our theatre should be accessible to all. But that is, in many ways, a pipe dream.

Those on low and/or fixed incomes will always find paying to attend theatre of any sort a challenge. And there is no way that public subsidy could be used to really make theatre accessible to all.

Is this actually more about the guilt of the privileged rather than anything else?

There are issues about access to theatre even at a community level. Looking at my own city, there are some groups who have membership fees of £5-£10 per year and others where the fee is in the region of £200 (and in the case of some youth groups closer to £300) - if you are in the lower income brackets, setting aside £200 for membership fees is an amount of money that will make you pause for thought - even before taking into the consideration of associated costs (travel to rehearsals/performances, providing elements of costume and so forth). I know having any hobby brings with it a certain level of cost but I find membership fees at that sort of level to be unacceptable. If you can't make your group work without that sort of fee - then you need to change the way you work. Then, of course, you have the 'am dram tax' - where you persuade your friends in other groups to come and see your latest show in return for you going to see theirs! Very much a first world problem - but one that I now opt out of - I don't actively ask my friends to come to see my productions and, in return, they don't push me to go to theirs!

Why is this so? How come it worked - and, for the most part, still does - in former socialist countries? In Yugoslavia, and even now in this skint raspberry-republic of Serbia, all theatre has always been publicly subsidised and, as such, accessible to all and catering to all. Uk is a much richer country than Yugoslavia ever was, so I genuinely don't get why more public subsidies are out of the question. Unless it's all just about profit and not about making culture available to everyone.

If theatre better represented the non-metropolitan working class, by for example giving equal access to generally pro-Brexit anti-immigration plays poor old Lynn would be the first to complain.

Is Sheffield getting a new arts centre? How exciting! Did you know about this BurlyBeaR?

No! I hope it’s more successful than the national music museum thingy in the big silver ali baba baskets. 

A fair amount to chew on, some of it seeming to miss the point by quite a long distance.

One thing is that people are tending to talk as audience members whereas the article, and the concern to myself, is about participants primarily. The key question is about access to the business, not access to a ticket.

As I've previously made clear I am from a very much working class background and, however much I have been educated, however much I mix in different circles it never leaves you. It isn't as fixed or as visible as gender or race but it is an identity that you carry with you everyday.

Briefly, my own background, for context.

Apart from all the 'Four Yorkshireman' stuff; the outside toilets, tin baths and rickets (seriously) that are all part of my family experience, my upbringing had many elements of the newly less class ridden world of the sixties and seventies such as comprehensive education, student grants and so on. Being successful in artistic endeavours, musical, dramatic and so on, was a bit of a confusion to parents working in factories and such but they were, and remain, very supportive and proud of the son who made it out. That idea, of 'getting out', of not going into the factory was drilled into me from a very young age, that I now had the chance to do better and the state could now help me do so, unlike for my parents or grandparents.

My experience of theatre was seaside shows, variety on television, the odd TV production and, with the advent of Channel 4, proper, actual theatre on television, in a way that people now would probably find unbelievable. The National Theatre Mysteries, Peter Hall Oresteia and, one that sticks in my mind, the Belt and Braces production of Dario Fo's 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist' redone with a TV studio audience. I read, however, and was supported by an English teacher who literally gave me a box of plays and said 'read those'.

So, I got to University and realised that I was working class, strangely that was less of an issue with the Music side of me than the Drama side but, even then, to be a working class Drama student was to be a curiosity. Maybe it's the nature of the business. Partly it's lack of cultural opportunities, partly financial, partly life experience. To risk a business where I could easily end up out of work and making ends meet or to play safe and get a more steady job where I wouldn't become a burden? Not much of a choice really, others risked it and succeeded, others risked it and failed.

Which is all prologue.

What do ‘the working class’ want from theatre?

Not any type of theatre but to be part of it, to have the opportunity to participate on a more level playing field. So please don’t expect them to work for free and have unpaid internships or think that endless profit shares and such are going to weed out people on quality. They weed out people in terms of financial backing instead. There isn’t a working class theatre that can be demanded stylistically but participation and access lead to it, the horse comes before the cart. Also, whilst middle class theatregoers may be fretting about the working class it really isn’t happening the other way around……

Are people really just interested in film and TV?

Well it’s more visible if you don’t have the cash or background in going to the theatre, so TV especially is a particular goal. More TV broadcasts, online streaming of the people who are seen in film/TV on a stage instead would do wonders. Maybe the NT Live of the cinema needs to expand to be the NT live of the television/Netflix as well. There is some irony, I taught someone in a now relatively successful cabaret group based in Manchester who have since appeared on television, they are well known for working class focused work but that isn’t exactly their real background. TV has its ersatz working class performers if the real ones aren’t available…

Oxfordsimon - There are youth groups that charge £200+? That ‘s shocking, it really is. I haven’t been a part of the amateur scene for a long time but surely that isn’t widespread?

Public subsidy – good or bad?

There are two issues here, firstly the way that subsidy creates a culture and, secondly, the way that culture creates access.

Essentially, the presence of the former and the lack of the latter can be a real problem.

On creating a culture. No government should be defining worthwhile culture through selective sponsorship. This was the case with the way that the arts were built post war in this country, however:- Theatre, Opera, Classical Music etc., all subsidy worthy; Variety, musical theatre, popular music, not subsidy worthy. It’s that that created this divide between high and low culture. Arts subsidy is now more spread out culturally but we are still paying for that sort of attitude. It is also still not evenly spread throughout the country, it needs a more nationally driven system, not odd companies here and not there. Spread it out geographically as well as culturally.

On creating access. There was a high point, which I was able to ride (unaware that such an opportunity would start to fade away even a decade after me). There is now, loudly broadcast through the system of fees and loans, a system that says ‘do something that will earn you money’. No wonder that those on arts courses are becoming more well off. Again, I’ve benefitted and been able to get students into higher education, into Drama schools and such, with ease. Yes, we have a better system of funding of education groups and individuals through national and regional funding but it’s piecemeal, it’s conditional and it can reach some areas whilst completely passing much of the country by. Access to arts education and training needs to be national and you don’t help that by not including arts subjects in the way that schools know they are going to be measured, through the EBACC. I can see access to the arts in education diminishing in all but independent schools. From that then there is less access to higher education, the skewing of the profession becomes even greater, the arts become more, rather than less elitist.

Access – make it available, make it financially viable, make it national not piecemeal.

Doesn’t matter what you think a working class audience wants if the drawbridges had been raised years ago.

Reading what an examination course syllabus says is like reading a precis of a book, it is a mere outline of all that is taught. A good teacher will give a perfect springboard for further study (and for many, it is their last point of contact with the subject as not all will carry on with it). I am grateful to many students who have thanked me for doing that and giving them a real headstart at drama school or university. I’ve sent more than one student to places like RADA and Central in the past five years. I’ve seen performers I have taught in theatres across the country, on TV, broadcasting on national radio, one having a play performed in New York and so on, just in the last year. Drama courses in schools are worth it. Sometimes there are poor teachers, yes, but that isn’t the fault of the subject. It is also not supposed to be a recreative exercise, taking existing texts, it is as much about the creation of the new. You make it sound like an offshoot of English. Theatre visits are also useful as spurs to creativity but are not an end in themself. To want to deny every student in this country access to an arts education, that is a shocking admission.

On the subject of too many people being trained, I am more in agreement. More importamt is that the mix of different backgrounds, cultures and so on is represented, which is the focus of the article.

The problem with having core subjects is that schools teach to them, in the same way that teaching to the test has made much education reductive.

We live in a world which has changed so much in such a short time, I have students who already make their own films, for example. One who has bypassed higher education completely because he has already become a success without it. Performance permeates our everyday lives, I could never have dreamed how much when I was their age. To be educated for the future is very different now and leaving it to higher education is just too late.

The economics of opera have always made it a challenge to do as a fully commercial enterprise.

Compared to musicals, opera has

1 - Much bigger forces - chorus, orchestra, set
2 - Shorter runs - opera singers can't perform the same role night in, night out - so there is only ever a limited number of performances

Making that work without subsidy is very difficult and we see very few opera companies performing the core repertoire as scored attempting to survive without subsidy of some sort. Yes, there are smaller companies who work without chorus, who use massively reduced orchestration or just keyboards who can manage without outside funding - but they aren't able to represent the full range of opera.

Musicals require, on the whole, a smaller set of resources and have extended runs meaning the costs are recouped over a longer period making the whole budgeting process easier.

Would opera survive without subsidy (whether from donors or the public purse)? Not in Opera House form.

The commercial realities are that musical theatre can be financial viable and, at times, highly profitable.

If you want the full range of theatre forms to exist and be seen, you have to target the money in the best way possible to allow that to happen. Do we get the level of subsidy right when it comes to Opera? That is a different question. But if we want Opera as part of the mix then we have to accept it will need support.