Memorandum submitted by Mr Howard Goodall
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
The current government has been more generous
to the Arts during its term of office than any previous administration
in British history and so it is with some dismay that once again
we encounter arts organisations in dire straits whose only hope
seems to be bailing out by the tax payer. Whilst it is undoubtedly
true that it is harder for new musicals from young or unknown
writers to be produced than it is in either the "straight"
theatre sector or opera, it does not necessarily follow that the
answer to this dilemma is direct state funding of some kind. New
musicals whose material is challenging and whose cult audience
may expect to reach around 100 or 300 people a night for a few
weeks are not necessarily the same species of work that could
expect to fill larger theatres for months or years.
It is assumed in much of the discussion thus
far that there is a pyramid structure at the bottom of which lie
untried writers and their works who learn their trade and move
upwards through that pyramid to the heady heights of West End
triumph, and that their ground-breaking material feeds through
to the blockbusters, nourishing the roots of a lucrative, tourist-friendly
industry. Yet the two genres—smaller, intimate chamber works
written in the shadow of, say, Stephen Sondheim and the blockbusters
written in the wake of Lloyd Webber or Boubil-Schonberg are in
fact entirely different in their aim, style, structure and appeal.
There is, for example, very little crossover between their respective
audiences. Personally I wholeheartedly support the excellent repertoire
and goals of the Bridewell Theatre but it does not follow that
their work is linked umbilically to that of the West End, or to
the country's wider theatrical community, and for the small dedicated
numbers of people who are its core audience a state subsidy, whilst
desirable, might have limited national impact. Crudely put, the
taxpayer might as well fund slap-up meals at Quaglino's for selected
groups of citizens across London. The Bridewell does offer opportunities
for the mounting of small scale professional productions, but
in the year 2003 there are many ways to showcase and present musical
works other than full-blown try-outs of this kind. For potential
producers and investors in musicals it is possible, for example,
to arrange low-cost workshops and "readings" thanks
to the availability of supportive performers offering their services,
similarly it is possible to make low-cost, high quality recordings
on CD and most of the country's conservatoires, universities,
drama schools and colleges offer opportunities to showcase works
to various levels of finesse. Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the
Scarborough National Student Drama Festival feature scores if
not hundreds of such small-scale musical theatre works presented
by enterprising student bodies. Musical theatre pieces that show
outstanding promise can and do find an audience—I do not
believe developing that small audience into one the size of a
West End theatre is the job of a national funding body, it is
the job of producers. There may indeed be a shortage of enterprising
producers in musical theatre but that is a different problem from
the one specifically being addressed here.
Many of the MMD's members write musicals in
the hope of finding success in the West End or Broadway—the
genre not surprisingly attracts composers who wish to emulate
the extraordinary pecuniary achievements of Lord Lloyd Webber—but
must accept that in this highly commercial field a commercial
market is operating whereby populist works with mass appeal will
attract producers more readily than cutting-edge pieces of musical
theatre. If writers of musical theatre want to benefit from lavish
state subsidy they may do so within the opera sector, but accept
that the downside is never having that jackpot hit on Shaftesbury
Avenue. Very few writers of "musical theatre" are prepared
to approach opera companies (of all sizes) with their works.
THE ROLE
OF OPERA
In terms purely of idiom and singing style the
two fields of opera and musical are growing ever closer. Opera
companies increasingly programme classic musicals, their studio
projects of new works are often indistinguishable from modern
"musical theatre", and their education/outreach programmes
are almost always music-theatre-based rather than straight opera-based,
since they appreciate that the musical is an altogether more user-friendly
commodity than "opera", especially amongst young people.
I myself have worked with the City of Birmingham Touring Opera
Company on a "community" work, involving 120 local people
performing alongside 20 or so professional opera singers and musicians.
Not one member of the cast, company, audience or visiting press
seemed to be bothered that the compositional style of the piece,
whilst through-sung, was largely of a "musical" nature.
Jonathan Dove's community pieces are similarly cross-bred stylistically.
Given that this is now the case may I make the following plea?
Instead of funding yet more buildings and administrators
specifically for new small or medium-scale musicals, encourage
the opera companies—who already receive gigantic sums of
public subsidy—to embrace this sector of the market, to
benefit not just those writers of new musicals but also the opera
companies themselves whose aim surely in the 21st century is to
widen their audience. With respect to opera provision in the capital
city, if one could start again from scratch one obviously wouldn't
create two large opera houses 800 metres from each other.
Nor would one saddle these houses with outdated sitting orchestras.
Paying four trombones and a tuba player, say, during a month of
Mozart performances nowadays is ludicrous, as is the concept of
paying a player to "belong" to the company when the
practice of deputising is now widespread and commonplace. But
these are insanities that have been inherited from the working
practices of a 19th century form that would take a genius to unravel.
Likewise, the principal accepted distinction between ENO and the
Royal Opera House used to be that ENO performed operas in English
with a repertory company whereas the Opera House performed in
the original languages with visiting stars. In an age of subtitles
the language issue is meaningless. In an age when a visiting opera
star can command tens of thousands of pounds for one performance,
the concept of state subsidy of such excess is equally dubious.
But the situation is as it is and if so much government money
is to be ploughed into both houses why not, as a quid pro quo
suggest that the Opera House's superb Linbury Studio take on the
task of presenting—in association with ENO—new works
of musical theatre that have shown promise in other smaller-scale
showcases? With the NYMT two of my musicals were presented at
The Linbury Studio Theatre and I can imagine no better permanent
home for the showcasing of NYMT's national work, or indeed for
the kind of repertoire currently presented by the Bridewell Theatre.
In other words, instead of providing yet another "home"
for the modern musical—with all its associated overheads—accommodate
it within the existing structures?
In line with the above thinking, it is also
absolutely right that the Arts Council of England are shifting
their funding priorities in this area to the projects themselves
rather than spreading the existing money yet further to accommodate
more buildings and organisations needing year-on-year core support.
However I suspect many others working in the field of the musical
will have been as puzzled as I was reading the exchange between
John Thurso and Ms Weir in the uncorrected oral evidence (Q85)
relating to the relative amounts spent by the ACE on operas and
musicals. What exactly is the quoted figure of £3.6 million
spent on? Since currently there are no core-funded clients of
the ACE whose explicit role is non-operatic musical theatre one
must assume the figure is solely devoted to grants and commissions
towards the mounting of musical works themselves by a range of
organisations, and yet the larger figure of £41.6 million
included the running costs of the client opera houses and
presumably another pot pays for the running of Britain's repertory
theatres. These reps are not required to allocate any specific
amount to musical theatre, one must therefore assume that their
general budget includes their musical productions, such as they
are. So to whom is the £3.6 million paid and for what? There
are roughly 150 writer-associates of MMD, a group who represent
a good number if not the entire body of the working, professional
writers of musical theatre in the UK. If the £3.6 million
was spent on commissions and grants for productions by companies
other than regional reps and opera houses then a sizeable
proportion of that writer-associate list must have received a
great deal of support already in the year 2003-04. Indeed, some
of these associates may have accrued considerable wealth as a
result of the grants. Perhaps there is another explanation that
did not emerge from the minutes.
Another case worthy of more detailed examination
is what happens to the investment made by the taxpayer in favour
of musicals that become commercially rewarding thereafter. In
the last 18 or so years the RSC would have earned hundreds of
thousands if not millions of pounds from the great success worldwide
of Les Miserables. All of us applaud the huge benefits
to our industry of the popularity of this show. Given that the
taxpayer made a considerable investment in this show before it
transferred to the Palace Theatre, it might be appropriate to
ask in the light of this discussion about the future of the musical
in Britain what happened to those RSC millions? Did they use any
of this windfall to re-invest in some new, small or medium-scale
musicals, or was it used to fund new plays or new Shakespeare
productions? Did it end up acting merely as a sponge to soak up
the high running costs of the company? Do the ACE know what happened
to the return on their investment?
Again, I applaud the success of Jerry Springer:
the Opera, but it is true to say that it owes its present
existence on the London stage almost entirely to the taxpayer,
both from its productions at BAC and at the RNT. It may even have
received indirect government support for its earlier incarnation
at the Edinburgh Fringe, though I do not know the details of this
previous arrangement. If its current production goes on to be
a West End long-runner and even to open successfully on Broadway,
it will earn for both BAC and the RNT substantial royalty dividends,
not to mention fortunes for its creators and private sector investors.
If that happens might it not be proper for that money to be ploughed
back specifically into musical theatre at those two organisations?
Can it not be a condition of ACE core funding that BAC commit
themselves to a minimum number of small-scale productions of new
musicals each year? Cameron Mackintosh has characteristically
ploughed some proportion of his company's profits from that and
other shows into investment in new musicals—supporting a
range of projects and organisations including NYMT and MMD—and
Andrew Lloyd Webber made a significant contribution to the future
of musical theatre with his support for the NYMT over a long period.
What gesture has the publicly-funded RSC made in the same period
to new musicals? Perhaps if they had not made the decision to
move out of the Barbican Centre they might have been able to provide
a small corner of their offices there to the NYMT, who unlike
the RSC would gladly have used the purpose-built rehearsal facilities
at the site as well.
The ACE and London's local authorities and boroughs
already fund a great many medium-scale, local and fringe theatres
within the M25. A casual glance at Time Out's weekly listings
suggest the figure may be in excess of 100. Leaving aside venues
that simply receive material, there are still a good number of
producing playhouses. Instead of finding yet more money to create
yet another venue for musical theatre is it not quite reasonable
to suggest that one of these already-funded theatres becomes
a specialist home for new musicals? Is that not a more sensible
use of resources, and are we not in danger of recreating the muddle
that saw the ENO and the ROH set up side by side in the centre
of London?
As a writer of musicals I am naturally attracted
to the idea of a permanent "home" for the musical, paid
for by someone else, but I am much more in favour of channelling
the available pool of cash into the projects and works themselves,
not into bricks and mortar. I would suggest that to support the
aims of the MMD and its UK-based writing teams, one solution would
be for the Arts Council to make available to regional repertory
theatres ring-fenced grants for the producing of new musicals
by UK-based writers. It is well known that regional theatres are
frightened of mounting anything but sure-fire musical hits because
of the costs and risks involved. If there was a financial top-up
available similar to that offered by commercial-sector producers
who are "buying" options on the future life of a show
my view is that more regional theatres would do so and would actively
seek out possible collaborating teams.
There is some confusion when contributors to
this discussion refer to "new writing" in the musical
theatre as to its provenance—and therefore relevance—to
this discussion. The Bridewell Theatre commissions and produces
works from all over the world, but inevitably—given the
form's history and repertoire—the emphasis is on American
musicals or musicals whose style owes much to Broadway or Off-Broadway.
It is worth noting that the Royal National Theatre's past record
on musical revivals has also been one of presenting American masterworks.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this—a good piece
is a good piece and its revival may actually stimulate the "home
market" by setting high standards all round—but it
is important that the UK Government's funding from whatever source
is directed to the perceived weakness in the arena—namely
the difficulty that new UK work has being produced to a high standard.
No-one can responsibly claim that the American musical is in need
of help from our side of the Atlantic, especially as the prospects
for new musicals in the USA are generally far healthier for the
reasons recorded in your earlier submissions. It is perhaps worth
remembering that the 20th century American musical in large part
grew out of an English genre—the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta,
mounted with enormous success without any state subsidy of any
kind!
YOUNG PEOPLE
AND THE
MUSICAL
It has been my great privilege and delight to
have worked on so many musicals with young people, either through
the auspices of the NYMT, through Sainsbury-sponsored education
projects, Music for Youth, or through countless school and youth
productions of my works. There is no doubt whatever that it is
in this area that musical theatre can make the most profound impact
on our cultural life and on the lives of so many youngsters across
the UK. That the experience can transform the self-esteem and
outlook of a young person is beyond question and the huge growth
in school, college and university courses, modules and extra-curricula
activities in this area is evidence of a sea-change in the perception
of musical theatre during my lifetime. In the 1960s a tiny proportion
of schools attempted their own productions of musicals, now it
is the norm. These events in the school's life are seen as key
confidence and team-building exercises, with many intangible spin-offs
in terms of relations between students and with their staff. The
work of the NYMT as a "fast track" to run alongside
this phenomenon at local level has been outstanding, bringing
high levels of expertise and experience into the field. It is
odd, then, that schools are forced to pay fairly hefty percentages
of their takings for such events, plus up-front licence fees,
just to perform these musicals. For a well-endowed school with
middle-class parents, finding a few hundred pounds even before
you have built your set or installed your sound system is not
prohibitive but it might be more of a deterrent in a less privileged
environment. Because of this and other pressures, schools—like
regional theatres—often fall back on old chestnuts like
Grease and Joseph. Might it not be possible to make
available to schools ring-fenced grants to put on musicals by
living UK-based writers (perhaps they'd spot a loophole and still
do Joseph!)? If every secondary school in the UK, when
alerted to this opportunity were also given details of the MMD's
members and their extensive repertoire of works, is it not possible
that the added bonus of the presence and participation of these
skilled professionals in themselves would help raise standards
and widen the horizons of the students involved?
In Q94 of the uncorrected oral submissions to
the Committee, I note with pleasure that the chairman referred
to the last World War II destroyer now preserved in Chatham Historic
Docks, saved by government intervention from the scrap yard. By
coincidence I was filming at the Destroyer this week for my new
Channel 4 music series and very impressive it is too. Perhaps
because I wasn't on one of the excellent guided tours I was not
aware that the warship had been saved in the manner the chairman
mentioned and wish that there had been a more prominent sign to
this effect at the site. In the late 1980s, I seem to remember,
the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford received a then record
sponsorship package from Royal Insurance to support their work
of, I think, £1 million. For this magnanimous gift they had—understandably—negotiated
extremely prominent billing outside the theatre for all the millions
of visitors to Stratford to admire. However, it was still only
a fraction of the huge sums paid to the RSC from the British taxpayer
and I wondered then as I wonder now with respect to that WW2 destroyer,
the Royal Opera House, ENO, the National Theatre and all other
such national treasures, if it would be appropriate for there
to be a large and friendly sign, eclipsing that even of the sponsors,
reading "Funded by the People of Great Britain" so that
every taxpayer could see and be justifiably proud of what their
money buys, to ensure that whenever a member of an operatic design
team contemplates a costume costing £3,000 they are reminded
who is footing the bill, and so that the Arts Council officers,
instead of being seen as the men (and women) from Del Monte who
say "yes" are properly perceived as servants of the
people of this country and their magnificent heritage.
3 November 2003
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